Final preparations for a major revamp of North West cricket got the green light on Thursday night when a well attended Extraordinary General Meeting ratified the proposals of the Union's "Think Tank", heralding the start of a new era of administration in the sport here.

Whilst many of the office bearers will remain in place, at least to oversee the transition, the new proposals will see the involvement of many more within the cricket community. Alan Montgomery moves from President to Patron of the NWCU; the post of President will now replace that of Chairman and present incumbent Joe Doherty was elected to that one.

Jim Lindsay stays as General Secretary and Treasurer while Robin Glenn was unopposed as Fixture Secretary. While those are fairly familiar faces in their posts however, the roles within have been re-defined. The nucleus of responsibility for the day-to-day running of local cricket will now fall to three specialist committees- a cricket competitions committee, a development committee and a finance committee.

Each committee will be led by a "director", and the three directors will join Joe, Jim and Robin along with one member of each of the committees (still to be decided) to form a 9-man Board of Control. The cricket committee will probably be the busiest to start with, and David Bradley was elected to the top post in that one.

The Internationally qualified umpire will be joined by the likes of Adrian Heywood, Trevor Hamilton, Brian Allen (Eglinton) and Johhny Robinson as well as one more representative from the umpires association and one from grounds inspection. They will be charged with the general running of the sport here and are already known to be attempting to clear the minefield of hurdles presented by the league restructuring and Inter Provincial committments.

The Development committee will also be extremely busy and Bobby Rao was a very popular choice as Director of Development. The former Indian Test star will not lack for support in the role either; NWDO Brian Allen (Fox Lodge), Stephen McCartney, John Semple and Noel Dunn joining him in that team who are also believed to have recruited Cricket Ireland's Tim Simmonite in an advisory capacity.

The Finance committee will come under the Directorship of Jim Lindsay as Treasurer, but the longer term aim is to blood someone to eventually take over the post to allow Jim to concentrate on General Secretary duries. Andrew Fleming was a very obvious choice to join that committee and it was a double whammy for the St Johnston man as he was also elected to become the Union's representative to Cricket Ireland, taking over from Ivan Lapsley. The finance committee will be made up of Noel McGinnis and Brian Dougherty along with a possible two more members to be confirmed at a later date.

A separate committee will look after disciplinary issues while Trevor Harpur has been asked to assist Barry Chambers and Lawrence Moore by providing player stats on a weekly basis during the season. Trevor will maintain and update a cumulative account of player stats to be provided to the Cricket Ireland website and the Coleraine man suggested that if the Union enforces the new rule insisting that summary scores are submitted within 72 hours of matches finishing in all Divisions, the new facility will be available throughout the leagues.

The most contested point of Thursday's meeting was the issue of promotion/ relegation between Divisions 1 and 2 at the end of the coming season. David Bradley presented a number of options to the meeting, but it came down to a straight choice for members.

One group lobbied that it would be unfair to have nothing for Division 2 clubs to play for while another reasoned that a play-off between the winners of Division 2 and the eighth placed team in Division 1 would give the former a one off shot at the top flight. In the end, the floor voted narrowly for a the play-off motion but it has yet to be made clear if that would be a one-off match or something like best of three.