Shoddy practice facilities at the majority of club grounds might soon be a problem of the past, according to Bermuda Cricket Board.

The governing body have revealed they are working with English netting specialists Tildenet in the hope of building top class nets at clubs Island-wide.

This is to be funded principally through money given to Bermuda by Antigua-based billionaire Allen Stanford, the man behind the Stanford Twenty20 competition in which the national team will compete this July.

Tildenet engineer Mark Cowling was in Bermuda earlier this week and took a tour of every sports ground alongside the Island?s latest recruit David Hemp. He also inspected ten school gymnasiums to consider the viability of installing indoor nets ? a facility national coach Gus Logie has told his bosses at the BCB he desperately needs.

?I?ve had a good look around the Island at what you currently have and there is certainly plenty of potential for development,? Cowling said. ?And out of the ten school gyms I visited, six of them I think would be able to accommodate the installation of nets. I will now produce a report for the BCB to look at and it will then be up to them to move this project forward.?

It is understood that the Jessie Vesey hall at the Bermuda High School for Girls is regarded as the most practical and best equipped centre for indoor nets on the Island and the BCB will soon be talking to the school about whether they could be installed.

BCB chief executive Neil Speight claimed yesterday that despite the intense media focus on the progress of the national team, the Board had ?not lost sight? of the need to invest in the Island?s domestic infrastructure.

It was made clear some time ago that the BCB?s ultimate objective was to build a state-of-the-art cricket academy near the National Sports Centre ? but they will pursue less expensive alternatives in the interim.

As soon as the costs have been established, Speight added, the plans would move ahead.

?Developing infrastructure is key to our thinking,? he said.

?It?s no secret that most clubs don?t have proper practice facilities and up to now the problem has been one of finance. Indoor facilities are also crucially important for us and it looks as though there are quite a number of locations across the Island where these nets could be installed.

?We want to move ahead with this as quickly as possible. But until I see Mark?s report, I won?t have any idea of the costs involved and therefore how quickly we can get to work.

?The money we got from Allen Stanford for infrastructure development will be used, and we might also seek to persuade Government to put aside some of the $11 million for this purpose as well.?