IF FAST BOWLING LEGEND Joel (“Bird”) Garner has his way, a united and revamped West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) is in the offing with the ultimate goal of restoring regional cricket to a position as a respected force.
As he prepares for a March 7 challenge to incumbent president Dave Cameron, Garner has a set of priority areas and a strategic focus for 2015-2017.
One of the concerns is that during the last few years, the WICB has been focusing on many things while neglecting the main part of its business – “cricket”.
Garner points out that territorial boards are “key resources” in West Indies cricket, and a newly reinvigorated WICB must work with them and all stakeholders, including WIPA and the players, corporate organisations and CARICOM “to create effective partnerships in order to build a strong, unified, accountable and well-governed organisation capable of bringing West Indies cricket, on and off the field, to a position where we are once against a respected force in world cricket”.
“The WICB will be respected as a high quality playing entity, both men and women, and respected as a business organisation, capable of efficient planning and implementation, to keep pace with the dynamism of the modern business environment within the sport,” Garner says.
Two key issues have been identified for immediate attention: Over the past ten years, the West Indies have languished in the lower half of the Test and ODI rankings; and there have been too many below par performances that have let down the fans and paying customers all over the world.
Garner, now into his fourth two-year term as president of the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA), has a ten-point list of Priority Actions – a mini-manifesto – for the annual general meeting in Kingston, when elections will be held.
•Place more emphasis on cricket with a definitive plan for moving up steadily in the rankings.
•Establish definitive standards of performance and conduct as agreed between the WICB and the players.
•Conduct and implement a full review of cricket at the junior level starting in the territories and moving to international competitions.
•Work more closely with the territories in formulating policies for developing young cricketers in order to achieve a revolution of the structure of junior cricket.
•Improve and increase communication between the WICB and territorial administrative heads to ensure that they are in sync.
•Work with the territories to provide more coaching education and training in order to improve the preparation and development of players at the territorial level.
• Ensure players prepare for tournaments in the way they play, that is, net sessions must be supplemented with more practice games and game scenarios.
• Focus, through the High Performance Centre, on remedial work for players when technical flaws are discovered.
• Encourage and expand women’s cricket; and
•Develop and implement suitably structured training for curators, umpires, match referees, scorers and analysts.