At the feet of history

Mon, Apr 21, '08

 

by VANEISA BAKSH

Writing in the Business Guardian about the period of West Indies cricket dominance and Trinidad and Tobago dominance in the field of natural gas monetisation, Anthony Wilson argued that we failed to appreciate the true greatness of our endeavours and thus missed their lessons.

We did not analyse processes sufficiently and never tried to model future projects on them, he said, and so, we frittered away our inheritance.

"We allowed others, who put in the required work and who unashamedly studied and copied our methods, to gain ascendancy over us," wrote Wilson, concluding that this was not so much the inertia of laziness as it was a failure to realise how good we really were.

It struck a chord in me as it is an aspect of one of my crusades for us to understand the importance of recording what we have done – our journeys – so that we can use that information for planning.

We have never been interested enough in building archival memory and it is a fundamental cause of today's amnesia. We do not view the journeys with sufficient alertness to grasp their value for the future.

Our cricket manifests the loss of memory that has left us stranded at the bottom of the international rankings, and demonstrates how others recognised the greatness we failed to honour, respect and acknowledge and harnessed it to their benefit.

They studied us. They studied our methods, styles and characters and adapted them to suit their conditions in a structured manner. Far-off academies were based on a model designed right here at Cave Hill years ago, but ignored within the politically-minded West Indian circle.

For more than a decade, Sir Viv Richards had called for a coaching manual to be developed that was based on the distinctive style of our cricket. We gave cricket this style. We did. Why haven't we asserted our ownership of it by producing that manual?

What could be simpler to produce at a time when the people who were deeply involved in it were still around to share that knowledge? What could provide a better teaching tool right around the region than a manual constructed upon our own greatness? In this day of technological wizardry, it could be presented in a multi-media format – books, CDs, online and on DVDs. There is little to prevent it being absorbed at all levels. And this doesn't just apply to a coaching manual. The Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board has been working with a development plan that has yielded positive results. Surely they could be encouraged to document their processes to share with sporting bodies regionally?

And it ought not to stop there.

In different spheres, people are finding innovative ways to build their organisations to meet the challenges of our time. Right under its nose, Barbados has developed a model that is of vital importance to the rest of the region in terms of the development of partnerships between the public and private sector.

It is not enough to say we were great cricketers once upon a time.

We have to move "beyond the lip service and the boasting" that Wilson complained about and get into a more substantial and active way of recognising achievements. True recognition of excellence resides within the desire to emulate it. The region needs models to help it develop. We have the capacity to provide these manuals of relevant experience, and at this critical time, we have a responsibility to share that knowledge – to record our histories and to plan for our future.

* This column is republished with permission from the Nation News in Barbados, where it first appeared.