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Director of high performance of Cricket Ireland (CI) to be replaced by Graeme West, the high-performance manager currently employed by Cricket West Indies (CWI).
Beginning in 2012, West worked closely with emerging talent from throughout the West Indies throughout his tenure at CWI. In 2016, he served as the coach of the West Indies squad that won the Under-19 World Cup. His current position as high-performance manager involves putting up academy programmes and developing a pool of coaches, following his work with the U-19 and ‘A’ teams. Beginning next month, he is anticipated to have a comparable prominence in Ireland.
West attended the Middlesex academy for five years before joining CWI. There, he collaborated with Paul Stirling, Andy Balbirnie, Andrew Poynter, Stuart Poynter, and other Ireland internationals. Despite not having played in the highest leagues of cricket, West is a qualified Level 4 ECB coach.
“I am delighted to be joining Cricket Ireland as the organisation continues to grow and strengthen,” West said in a statement. “The Strategic Plan for 2024-27 is incredibly exciting and I look forward to applying my experience and philosophy to the wealth of talent and expertise that has been assembled as we further establish Ireland as a major cricketing nation.”
Warren Deutrom, the chief executive at CI, said the appointment was a step towards Ireland becoming a “fit-for-purpose Full Member”.
“When we set out to create and recruit for the role, the profile, initiative and experience that Graeme possesses is exactly what we were looking for,” Deutrom said. “We knew that in order to be successful in this new role, the candidate required leadership experience, exceptional people skills and the ability to be a mentor as much as a manager. In Graeme, we believe we have found that candidate.
“As an organisation, we are going through a process of reviewing and evolving our operations to ensure we are fit-for-purpose as a Full Member in a rapidly changing environment. One of the strategic decisions we made was to acknowledge the scale and scope of our work has outgrown our pre-Full Member structures.”
The senior men’s squad will play South Africa later this month on a white-ball tour of the United Arab Emirates in a busy few weeks. The senior women’s squad will begin hosting England for three One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and two ODIs on Saturday.