'Please Reopen Cricket Academy'
Wed, Sep 6, '06
Ladies and gentlemen, let me say how pleased I am to be here, and how honoured I feel to have been asked to make a presentation at today's workshop at which so many stakeholders of West Indies cricket are present. I wish to congratulate the West Indies Cricket Board for taking this significant initiative. This exercise is so important to me that that I gave up a session of my Cabinet today to be here.
Let me take this opportunity to commend the WICB and WIPA for settling some of their longstanding difficulties.
As you may know, I am the Chairman of CARICOM's Prime Ministerial Sub-committee on Cricket. But this afternoon I wish to take off my political hat and replace it with my cricket hat, small though it may be to yours.
There is an old adage that the right answers usually follow the right questions. That is as true today as it was thousands of years ago. Let's see how we can apply this principle to West Indies cricket.
West Indies cricket has had much success in the past. What was responsible for that success? Was it just due to natural talent or were other factors involved? What part did motivation, self-belief, mental toughness, discipline, professionalism and good teamwork play? What indeed did good leadership and mastery of the basics contribute to that success? How good were our systems for identifying, developing and enhancing natural talent?
Did the natural way of learning to play the game on our beaches and roads, and in our villages, schools and clubs influence our mindset and performance at higher levels? Current research says that it did. Research has shown that movement skills learned in a natural and unstructured way are superior and hold up better under pressure.
And how important was county cricket in the development of our players?
Just in case you have forgotten, let me remind you that West Indies teams dominated world cricket for about 15 consecutive years under the leadership of Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards. What has happened since then? Why has the standard of our cricket been on a steady decline?
I believe that enthusiasm, a positive attitude, controlled aggression, enjoyment of the contest, a strong will to win and a natural and athletic way of playing the game were key factors in our talented and successful teams. Those are the strengths that Worrell, Sobers, Lloyd and Richards brought out of their players.
Ignoring our past can be very damaging. We must resist the temptation to forget or devalue the achievements of our past players? And we must understand that they still have a lot to offer.
If we take our past out of the performance equation or try to model someone else's past, we will write ourselves a prescription for failure. That will be compounded if at the same time we fail to create clear goals of our future - where we want to go and what we want to become.
Ladies and gentlemen, cricket is both a science and an art. But, in recent years the art from of the game has suffered because of the overwhelming attention that has been given to the scientific aspects of the game.
Today, it is widely accepted that science is the way to determine truth, and that rational intelligence and logical thought are the most valuable abilities to have. But, if this were true in sport, the best sportsmen would be academics, historians, scientists and mathematicians.
From this scientific perspective, a beautiful calypso would be described and analyzed by focusing on the constituent parts of the music and the instruments. Sound waves and the mechanisms of hearing in the ear and brain would also be described. This however, would not give us a sense of the beauty of the music or the joy and emotions that it creates.
Looking at Lara's batting through the scientific lens, it would be broken down into its constituent parts. But we would never get a true picture of the whole movement and would certainly not get a sense of the power, rhythm, beauty and majesty of his stroke play.
For years, art has been an important part of West Indies cricket culture. It is responsible for our players' style and flair. Let's protect it and re-establish some balance between the art and science of the game.
Today, the need for good leadership, and the difficulty of providing that leadership are stronger than they have ever been. All organizations, including cricket organizations, are being forced to reconsider traditional beliefs, values, priorities, strategies and methods. Creating the best strategies and figuring out the right things to do in today's rapidly changing cricket environment are very difficult. And getting members of cricket boards and other stakeholder organizations to accept new ideas, new realities and new ways of doing things is equally difficult.
These new challenges require skills and approaches that the leaders of those boards and organizations did not need a decade or two ago.
A proper insight into reality and good communication are two of the most important skills needed for good leadership. If they are absent, poor performance results and conflict and all sorts of problems follow.
Looking at the way forward for West Indies cricket, I suggest that our leaders start by taking two fundamental steps. The first is to create an agenda for change that includes the important ingredients that I mentioned earlier and the second is to build a strong and cooperative team of motivated people, on and off the field, to implement that agenda.
In the agenda for change we should first create a clear vision of what and where we want West Indies cricket to be in the next ten or fifteen years. We must then transmit that vision to the players and to every person inside the organization. Clive Lloyd did that in 1976 after his team's humiliating defeat in Australia. His vision was to create an outstanding team that would dominate world cricket for at least ten years.
Second, that vision must take into account the long term needs and interests of the important stakeholders - current players, future players, the West Indies Players' Association, the West Indies Cricket Board, local boards, the sponsors, clubs, schools, the public, the press, governments, etc.
Third, there must be a clear and simple strategy for achieving that vision.
And fourth, that strategy must take into account all of the relevant forces in the cricket organization as well as the powerful and sometimes competing forces in the environment in which it functions.
In building a strong implementation network, the Board must construct and maintain cooperative and harmonious relationships with the key sources of power that are needed to implement that strategy.
It must build relationships that are strong enough to elicit cooperation and coordination of effort, compliance, shared commitment to a common purpose, and good teamwork.
And it must carefully select and build a highly motivated core group of people who are committed to making the organization's vision a reality.
It must also put the right structures, systems and procedures in place to direct and focus that core group's energies and efforts towards the achievement of the common goal.
The funding of cricket must be looked at as one of the most important areas in any strategy that we adopt. Cricket is no longer a hobby; it is a professional sport which requires a professional approach. The West Indies Cricket Board, the Players Association, Governments and the private sector throughout the region must work together to adopt a transparent, efficient and sustainable approach to the financing of cricket.
The board, players association along with Governments must move rapidly to become more business oriented in their approach to the game.
The layers of red tape and bureaucracy need to be removed or simplified. The inter personal and inter agency relationships that exist within our cricket need to become more focussed on the long term objectives of the sport.
It has been my experience during many of my talks with private sector groups around the region that our companies in the region want to invest in cricket. However, we all should realise that if the conditions are not right the true commercial value of this sport will never be realised.
Those of you who watched the exciting Stanford 20/20 Competition would have noticed how it enthused and energized players and spectators alike. One could not help but marvel at the natural talent of the young players from around the Caribbean. Witnessing that talent from the entire region pleased me enormously, but I was particularly thrilled to see the abundance of talented youngsters from the OECS region.
I have always been keen to see greater emphasis placed on cricket development in the OECS countries because we sometimes feel like neglected children in the West Indies cricket family.
We were hoping that the Shell Cricket Academy of St. George's University in Grenada would not only be a 'finishing school' for cricketers from the entire Caribbean region but also be a base for the development of younger and older players from OECS countries.
That is why I was so disappointed when the WICB decided to discontinue the running of the Academy because of lack of funds.
We in Grenada were extremely proud of the Academy and were particularly impressed by the quality of its well-researched programmes and by the good work it was doing for the development of West Indies cricket.
Apart from the personal development and cricket development of its students, what impressed me most about the Academy was its commitment to instilling discipline, a good work ethic, a positive attitude and a competitive mindset in its students. I got great pleasure from lecturing and talking to the students every year.
The facilities at the University are very good. But by the end of this year the combination of the new facilities we are building for the World Cup and the university facilities will make Grenada a truly outstanding cricket centre.
Nothing would please me more than to see the Academy revived and restored in Grenada.
What I would like to see is better preparation of players before they come to the Academy. I would also like to see the Board develop a continuing education programme for players leaving the Academy where they could get greater exposure to competitive cricket in the region and overseas, in places like India, Sri Lanka and England. I hope that players would spend longer periods at the Academy to get certification in certain skills by the time they leave.
In that regard, I am pleased to say that Juari Edwards of Antigua, one of the players who attended the Academy stayed on at the University. At the end of this academic year he will be graduating with a bachelor's degree in business administration.
Very soon we will be hosting World Cup 2007 in the Caribbean. We have been presented with unique challenges that have in many respects stretched us and brought us closer together. I feel confident that we will put on a good World Cup. And I am sure that when our visitors leave our shores, after receiving our Caribbean hospitality, they will remember the good times they had in the West Indies long after they have forgotten the results of the cricket matches that they witnessed.
Friends Let me leave you by saying ...that we should all remember that West Indies Cricket does not belong to us in this room. It belongs to the people of this region. Any decisions that we make should be ones which will not only advance the sport but make our people proud.
* Dr. Keith Mitchell is prime minister of Grenada and chairman of the Caricom sub-committee on cricket. This speech was presented at the WICB Regional Cricket Development Workshop held in Antigua on Monday, 4th September, 2006.)