Cricket West Indies lays out roadmap to improve state of the game with ‘about a hundred things to improve’.
Cricket West Indies works on roadmap with ‘about a hundred things to improve’.
An emergency meeting of Cricket West Indies, which included Brian Lara, Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Desmond Haynes, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, and current head coach Daren Sammy, among others, concluded with a sort of revival roadmap in place, but “it’s a long road, it’s not going to happen tomorrow.” West Indies are “not in the same level-playing field as other playing countries.” As Lloyd stated, one of the first choices is to request a “special dispensation”—more funding—from the ICC in recognition of the West Indies’ illustrious history.
Many ideas were discussed, but it was not yet appropriate to make an announcement since they needed to go through an internal procedure before being implemented, according to CWI executives and Lloyd and Lara, who attended a press briefing at the conclusion of the two-day meeting in Trinidad. There was also apprehension because West Indies cricket has been on a rapid and apparently endless downward slide. “Hope to see them come to fruition,” Lloyd said. “Sincerely hope this doesn’t come to some damp squib.”
“We have identified a list of about a hundred things that we have to improve, but probably among the top five: facilities at every level for our cricketers; practice pitches across the region; the quality of our domestic tournaments, there’s definitely a skills deficiency at various levels that don’t get highlighted till they reach international levels and then you see the glaring deficiencies vis-a-vis our international counterparts, which again is systemic,” Chris Dehring, the CWI chief executive said.
“As the batting coach [Jimmy Adams] pointed out, it’s very difficult to change habits when you are getting somebody who has made so many runs at regional level but clearly has deficiencies when it comes to international level. It’s very difficult to change in a couple of weeks. There are issues concerning strength and conditioning, which again points back to facilities which are available to youngsters and emerging players and ‘A’ teams, etc.”
Dehring said that, among other things, CWI planned to have “a proper high-performance centre established in the region, a prototype that will then be modelled and imitated across the region, in other countries, [and] academy systems to ensure that the West Indies way of playing cricket is both documented and taught from very early”.