Former national team captain Wendell Smith has been appointed the Bermuda Cricket Board?s new national academy director, responsible for the development of all youth cricket on the Island.

The widely respected Smith, who also captained the St. George?s Cup Match side, has taken an open-ended leave of absence from his job as headmaster of Paget Primary School to assume the role full time.

His broad mandate will be to co-ordinate and improve all national junior teams from under-13 to under-19 level and to encourage schools Island-wide to devote more hours to the sport.

The appointment takes the pressure off national coach Gus Logie, who will now be left alone to concentrate solely on the senior national team.

Present at yesterday?s announcement at BCB headquarters was Education Minister Terry Lister, who admitted that schools cricket had been neglected for too long.

However, he said he was confident a man of Smith?s experience and expertise would be able to arrest this alarming decline in standards.

Smith said: ?I think we are all aware that Bermudian cricket is heading in a very exciting direction.

?While Gus has done an excellent job with the national team, it will be my responsibility to deal directly with the grassroots and make sure that cricket in Bermuda remains strong and successful way beyond the World Cup next year.

?I?m going to be spending a lot of time with physical education teachers discussing how we can get more cricket played and given the time it deserves.

?I then want to identify talent as early as possible and bring it through the national youth ranks.

?Gus and I have very similar coaching philosophies so I want to be handing young players over to him who have been properly groomed and have the dedication to succeed at a senior level.?

Smith added that he wanted to have all junior national teams training and playing together on a more regular basis ? preferably year round ? so that Bermuda?s elite cricketers grew up playing together as a cohesive unit.

The pathway to the senior national side would be more clearly defined as a result, he argued.

Asked whether Smith?s new job title implied that the long-awaited construction of a state-of-the-art cricket academy was soon to become a reality, BCB vice-president Allen Richardson offered only a guarded response.

?I knew we might be asked why we are appointing an academy director when we do not have an academy to speak of,? he said.

?But I can assure you that an academy is very much part of our long-term thinking.

?It is difficult to find any cricket playing country which does not by now have an academy of sorts and we are extremely keen to have one in the future. But to build something like that is going to cost a huge amount of money and even with $11 million at our disposal, we can only take one step at a time.

?Our focus now has got to be on ensuring that the infrastructure of Bermudian cricket, from the grassroots up is in the best shape it possibly can be.?

Smith, meanwhile, said he would be leaving his job at Paget Primary with a heavy heart and thanked the staff, the pupils and the parents for their unwavering support.

?I enjoyed my time at Paget Primary immensely and I leave the school in a very healthy state,? he said.

?But now I have been given an opportunity to work with young people and to make a difference across the whole country which I am looking forward to immensely.

?Sport offers young people so many opportunities and with Bermuda cricket now in such a strong financial state, those opportunities will only increase.?