CWI appoints veteran coach as batting consultant

Newly appointed Cricket West Indies batting consultant Bob Carter has been handed a mandate to raise batting standards across the region and help lay the foundation for future generations of world-class players.

CWI announced the appointment of the veteran New Zealand-born coach on Wednesday, with Carter taking on the role at a critical period for West Indies cricket and international competition.

Carter, who brings more than 30 years of elite coaching experience, will work alongside regional and high-performance coaches to strengthen the coaching system and develop a stronger pipeline of batting talent. 

“My focus has always been on supporting players and coaches to reach their full potential, and I am looking forward to working alongside the regional and high-performance coaches to help achieve that,” he said.

Carter served as High-Performance Coach with New Zealand Cricket from 2012 to 2025.

He was also head coach of the New Zealand Women’s team from 2019 to 2022, and twice as the men’s assistant coach, alongside previous head coaching roles with Canterbury and Wellington, and as director of cricket at Northamptonshire County Cricket Club in England.

Carter, who officially took up the role on September 1, will work across CWI’s men’s, women’s and age-group programmes. His appointment comes as West Indies prepare for the Men’s ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier in February and March 2027, followed by the World Cup preparation window.

His first assignment will be a regional tour later this month, taking him across all six first-class territories – Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, the Leeward Islands and the Windward Islands – where he will work directly with players and coaches.

Carter’s mandate will have two principal areas of focus; providing specialist technical support to elite and emerging batters, while also strengthening the ability of regional and high-performance coaches, to design and deliver effective individual batting programmes.

CWI Director of Cricket Miles Bascombe said the appointment is also aimed at improving the regional coaching system.

“West Indies teams will participate in at least six global events over the next 24 to 30 months, including the Men’s World Cup Qualifier next February. The steps we take now are intended to lay the groundwork for success. Bob’s immediate job is to raise the technical standard heading into these events.
“But the measure of this appointment is not what our top six look like in twelve months. It is whether the coaches he works with come out of it better at teaching batting than they went in, and whether that reaches the coaching education modules the rest of the region is taught from. That is what lasts,” Bascombe said.

The appointment is part of CWI’s broader technical development programme and follows work by the Cricket Strategy and Officiating Committee, which identified specialist technical intervention and strengthening the regional coaching system as priorities for the development of West Indies cricket.

(KH/PR)