AN ARTICLE in the DAILY Nation of Thursday, May 27, reported some truly harsh comments by a senior West Indies Cricket Board official about the players the board employs. Now what did the official expect to achieve by his comments? He only confirmed that he too is embarrassed by the poor performance of the team.
The official making the scathing comments was not an anonymous person talking nonsense to his heart’s content on a call-in programme. He is charged with the responsibility of advising the board on how to put things right and then ensuring that the board’s programmes and policies are implemented to the satisfaction of all.
He has an awesome responsibility to the said players and to the public. What the public wanted to hear from him was not what was already known, and has been known for the past 20 years, but what steps are being taken to improve West Indies cricket and to bring pride and joy to Caribbean people. That is what he is paid for.
What West Indies cricket needs now more than any thing else is leadership. This is how we will get West Indies cricket from where it is to where we want it to be.
The people involved in administering West Indies cricket during the past three decades have failed to diagnose the problems, articulate the vision, show the way forward and involve the West Indian public in cricket’s recovery.
During the past three decades West Indies have changed board presidents, endured numerous board members, set up a secretariat, changed its location, established an academy, appointed highly paid CEOs and support staff, had advice from several consultants, involved the Caricom Heads of Government in labour disputes, paid the cricketers ridiculously high salaries, and yet our cricket has continued to decline. We must be missing the point somewhere.
The West Indies team is poor because West Indies cricket is poor. Yet no one, and definitely not from the boards (the WICB and the territories), is giving primacy to the cricket itself.
They don’t seem to understand that the game and the team are separate, even if connected.
Furthermore, they have not shown an ability to think through what needs to be done. The suggestion that a high-performance centre for 15 players will miraculously turn around the fortunes of the West Indies cricket team illustrates this lack of understanding.
It is not only the CEO that misunderstands the nature of the problem. Several presidents, and presumably the boards they lead, seem to have been labouring in the same fog.
During the 15 years that concern has been expressed about the performance of the West Indies team there has never been a diagnostic review of the state of cricket. There have only been pet theories about the causes of the decline.
These have ranged from the ridiculous such as “lack of opportunities to play in England” to the sublime that “Brian Lara was the problem”. Since there has been no diagnosis, there can certainly be no effective remedy.
Hence we have had all sorts of knee-jerk reactions, ranging from the fashionable “hiring Australian coaches” to the foolish “including the union boss on the board”.
The last major study by the WICB, the Patterson Study And Report, was concerned with examining and making recommendations on the structure of West Indies cricket. Not surprisingly, Mr Patterson did not report much that would be of benefit to cricket.
During the 15 years of concern no one has been asked to define a strategy for the recovery of West Indies cricket. Consequently, there is no plan to guide and ensure such a recovery. This puts the West Indies in a unique position among cricket-playing nations.
A recent WICB document entitled Transforming West Indies Cricket is about marketing opportunities arising from the West Indies involvement in cricket. It says nothing that has not been said before about improving the quality of players that will represent the hopes of Caribbean people.
Why then are we surprised about the team’s performance and its current ICC rankings? When businesses fail it is always as result of poor leadership. Cricket’s fortunes are no less dependent on good leadership than those of a business.
The extinction of the dinosaurs prompted the observation by Charles Darwin that “it is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones that are the most responsive to change”.
The West Indies Cricket Board, like extinct businesses and dinosaurs, has failed to recognise change and competition. The WICB has led West Indies cricket to where it is.
The weak and unsuitable players we have are the result of its developmental efforts over the past 15 years. There is no value in castigating them.
