By Neto Baptiste
One of the principals behind the Four Knights Academy, Sir Richie Richardson, is predicting that the initiative could be up and fully functional by the end of the year.
His belief follows on the heels of Saturday night’s re-launch of the academy which was originally launched in 2015.
“We are hoping that before the end of this year we can see something tangible happening. We have to meet with a few more people. We initially met with Cricket West Indies and the Government of Antigua and Barbuda who had agreed to partner with us. So, we are going to reach out to them again to see exactly what role they are in a position to play, but it is important for us to work with Cricket West Indies because it is all about the development of cricket in the West Indies,” he said.
Introduced following the 2014 general elections, the Four Knights Academy was conceptualised to highlight four of the country’s former international cricketers. The other three are former captain Sir Vivian Richards and former fast bowlers Sir Andy Roberts and Sir Curtly Ambrose.
The re-launch was held following the third place match between Pigotts Crushers and Bolans Blasters in the Cool & Smooth T20 Explosion at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium on Saturday night.
Sir Richie said funding will be the major obstacle.
“The most important thing now is to form linkages with partners and get sponsorship so we could create a platform to go forward. We basically have a coach in place already but we will need funding. We already have one supporter in Cool & Smooth and we will be reaching out to others. We’ve had some good interest shown and some of whom showed up tonight have pledged to come on board so we’re going to be reaching out to a number of institutions and corporations to come on board. Once we’ve got certain things in place then we’d be able to start the coaching aspect of the academy and then put the other aspects in place,” he said.
The brainchild of former sports minister EP Chet Greene, the Four Knights Cricket Academy was originally introduced as a joint government/CWI initiative. However, several attempts to move the concept forward failed, and in 2018 it was announced that the four knighted cricketers would take full control of the project.