The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) will host a two-day workshop beginning today, in Jamaica with members of its medical panel and other medical practitioners from the Caribbean. It will seek to review policies and develop strategies for the improved health and fitness of the West Indies team.

Professor Peter Fletcher, chairman of the WICB medical panel, along with fellow panel members Professor Sam Headley, an exercise physiologist, Dr. Akshai Mansingh, an orthopaedic consultant, and nutritionist Terrence Forrester, as well as Dr. Llewellyn Harper, a sports medicine specialist, and Dr. Aggrey Irons, a sports psychologist, will all attend the workshop, along with observers from the medical fraternity in Jamaica.

"We will look at the amount of cricket West Indies will have to play under the International Cricket Council's 10-year Test programme and see how it will impact on the players' health and fitness," remarked Gregory Shillingford, chief executive officer of the WICB.

"We will then decide the level of preparation that will be necessary and try to come up with methods for medical preparation and testing, medical protocols, fitness programmes and testing, as well as the implementation of a Medical and Fitness Policy and Procedures Manual."

Other WICB officials attending will be Michael Hall, cricket operations officer of the WICB; Ricky Skerritt, manager of West Indies team; and Ronald Rogers, sports therapist of the team.

The workshop was one of the recommendations approved at last Saturday's board of directors' meeting in Antigua, where a report submitted by Skerritt on the high number of injuries the team sustained during the tours to Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka last year was reviewed.

The workshop arose out of Skerritt's recommendation that a face-to-face meeting be held between team management and a panel of key sports medicine advisors as well as relevant WICB officials to discuss his report and other related issues.

The WICB is advised by a panel of doctors drawn from the medical faculty of the University of the West Indies, who have outlined a medical protocol for the preparation of the team.

The fitness of the senior West Indies team has been brought into sharp focus after the heavy casualty lists sustained on the visits to Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka last year, and many Windies Cricket fans have expressed great concern.

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