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Grenada's Prime Minister Keith Mitchell has repeated his call for the setting up of a Caribbean professional cricket league.

"I am convinced the time has come for the Caribbean governments, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the corporate community to come together and work towards the establshment of a professional Caribbean cricket league," Mitchell said in an address at the launching ceremony of the Shell Cricket Academy at St. George's University in Grenada on Monday night.

He said there was a "definite need" for such a league so that West Indian cricketers could earn a living from the game. "Moreover, a professional Caribbean cricket league will go a long way to improving the game in general (in the West Indies)," he added.

Mitchell, a former Grenada captain and avid supporter of West Indies cricket, has been instrumental in his government's construction of a new US$25 million cricket stadium with a capacity of 15 000.

His government had supported the academy "from Day 1", he said, and saw it as a "turning point" for West Indies cricket.

"Based on the current performances of the West Indies team and the teams in the regional competitions and the overall quality of our cricket, the only direction it can go in the months and years ahead is up and this academy will play a significant role in that upward mobility," Mitchell said.

"It will make better players and better people of those who are enrolled," he added. Emphasing that young cricketers had to "stay focused and understand the importance of education, discipline, commitment, training, patriotism and pride", Mitchell referred to the strike by West Indies players at London's Heathrow Airport prior to the 1998-99 tour of South Africa.

"There may well have been extremely legitimate reasons and concerns on the part of the players," he said. "However, we are compelled to ask in the context of that particular tour, what happened to patriotism, what happened to pride in oneself, pride in one's race, pride in one's sense of history?"

© The Barbados Nation