Wendell White has confirmed that he will run for president at the Bermuda Cricket Board’s Annual General Meeting this month.

Lloyd Fray announced that he will not seek a third term in the position, with former professional cricketer and West Indies certified coach White the first to publicly announce his decision to stand.

“I have handed in my letter and résumé and let them [BCB] know that I am interested in running for the post as the president of the Bermuda Cricket Board,” the former Somerset Cricket Club captain and Bermuda player told The Royal Gazette.

“I had a few people approach me about running and I thought about it for awhile. For years I have been saying our cricket needs to go further than where we are and with my love and passion for cricket I took it upon myself to put myself in a position that, if successful in running, I have plans to take cricket back to where it needs to be.”

White played professional cricket in England at Colchester Cricket Club and for Essex Second XI and holds West Indies Level 1 and 2 coaching badges.

As well as playing for Somerset locally, he represented Bailey’s Bay in the Eastern Counties and Willow Cuts in the Western Counties and has also had coaching stints at Flatts Victoria Club and Western Stars.

Asked what he believes is the biggest stumbling block in local cricket, Barbados-born White said: “My biggest problem with cricket in Bermuda is the one-day cricket. We are probably the only country in the world that’s playing our domestic league as one-day cricket and that is hampering our [youth] development.

“We need to get back into at least playing a two-day level of cricket. You can play two-day cricket and put the one day in between there because that’s how the world is playing now.

“All we do is play one-day and when we travel to compete against teams that are playing three and four-day cricket we can’t bat a day, so we need to go back to the basics and learn to bat and learn to bowl from the ground level up. That’s how cricket is played, we are being left behind.

“We have to get our cricket on that more serious level and we do not play enough cricket in Bermuda to compete at the highest level. We need to start playing more open cricket or two-day matches.”

White was a member of the Bermuda team who qualified for the ICC World Cup for the first time at the ICC Trophy in Ireland in 2005 and admits that he is “heartbroken” by the island’s slide down the ICC Associate pecking order since then.

“We worked hard to get us there and to see we have gone from that top level to where we are is not an easy pill to swallow because the foundation was laid,” he said.

“It bugs me why we are still in [World Cricket League] Division Four. We had the opportunity to go further, but teams like Afghanistan have gone past us when we were way ahead of them. It is really heartbreaking to know we are in this predicament after being a part of that good foundation.”

White believes that the sport needs to be promoted more in the schools and also wants to see youth cricket played throughout the summer school break as opposed to the youth season ending before.

“That is one area I look at where we can work all during the summer school break,” he said. “We have to get the youths involved in more cricket and my option would be to get them involved in under-19 cricket down in the Caribbean like they did before which produced some good young cricketers.

“We have to get back to using the advantage that we have next to us, which is the Caribbean. Use all of the cricket opportunities down there even with the senior national team.

“We need to play more cricket in those competitions down there so when we have our international tournaments we will be better and ready for it.”

White believes that there is a lot of untapped resources that can play a vital role in the development of players and taking local cricket to the next level.

“For some reason we have a lot of qualified coaches here who have played a number of years and have experience, but for some reason they are not involved in cricket per se and something is wrong with that,” he said. “If I am elected, I will reach a lot of these coaches and former players and find out what is the problem and attack it from there because we have good people here that can help us along and we need to use them.”