West Indies Cricket Board today unveiled plans for a new national cricket academy, which will be based at St George's University in Grenada.

The first intake of 24 elite young cricketers selected from throughout the Caribbean islands will gather at the American-funded university in May this year for an intensive three-month programme, which will focus on cricket but also teach other skills in computers and lifestyle management.

Facilities at St George's, which is principally a medical school, are widely regarded as the best in the Caribbean with first-class nets less than 50 yards from the beach, a well equipped gym and an impressive array of lecture rooms, all based in a picturesque hillside setting with spectacular views across the waters.

The decision to base the academy at St George's was driven by Dr Rudi Webster, the West Indies team psychologist who teaches medicine at the university and who seized on the chance when funds from America became available for a sports institute on the campus.

He approached the West Indies Cricket Board with a proposal to establish a cricket academy, outlining his vision to bring the best young cricketers, aged up to 23, to Grenada and with the help of top-class coaches and specialists, work on every aspect of their game to develop them into international players.

The academy will be named after the sponsor who has agreed to back the project for the first year. More details will be announced on 29 January but the sponsoring company is believed to be a high-profile international corporation already involved in cricket sponsorship.

Dr Webster, who grew up in Barbados but went to Edinburgh University to study medicine, played cricket for Warwickshire in the 1960s and in the last 25 years has specialised in the area of performance enhancement, working with golfer Greg Norman, Sir Viv Richards, Brian Lara and the Sri Lankan cricket team.

Now he intends to bring his own specialist skills to the development of young West Indian cricketers having persuaded his American academic bosses and the West Indies Board Cricket that the national game is in dire need of help.

"The West Indies boards and clubs are now beginning to understand that we now have a crisis in cricket and this is something I have been warning them about since 1988," said Webster, who is to be academy director.

"The future for West Indies cricket is not as bleak as some would have you believe. We just won the Under-15 World Cup and have some good Under-19 players and although we do not have the talent base that we had before we do have enough talented youngsters, if we can get hold of them and put them in development programmes, to produce a competitive side, and that is all we can ask at the moment.

"All these things are cyclical but you stay down longer if you don't put a recovery programme in place but we have not done that yet. But if people who had been running the game had been on the ball, they would have started a second development phase while West Indies were still doing well.

"We will come back. In another five years, we will be competitive again. It will happen sooner if we could find some young fast bowlers.

© 2001 CricInfo Ltd