Challenges of West Indies Cricket
I am indeed honored to be invited to discuss West Indies cricket with a knowledgeable and industrious group as the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM). I am further appreciative of this opportunity for two basic reasons – first, I used to be a budding journalist, but I was not very good at it and I figured if I could get Tony to get me to rub shoulders with you some of your skills might rub off on me so that when I get fired as CEO, which could be soon considering we had six in nine years, I could become a journalist.
The second and more important reason is that because I want to take this opportunity to have a conversation with you about the role of the media in reviving West Indies Cricket and how the WICB and the regional media can partner to improve cricket in the region and subsequently take us back towards the top of international cricket.
I believe that West Indies cricket is in some danger and that is putting it mildly, and it is no longer possible for the burden of fixing or saving West Indies cricket to be the sole responsibility of the WICB. Each of us, every West Indian, should be involved in the quest to return West Indies Cricket to cricketing supremacy. As a result, I have taken the first step in bringing that challenge to the West Indian population by making this dialogue with the ACM my first statement to the media as CEO.
Each of the 6-million-plus West Indians within the cricketing Territories of the West Indies, plus the other 6-million at least in the Diaspora, have something to say about West Indies cricket – some of these citizens articulate their ideas and opinions through you, others simply vote with their feet by not going to the games, and yet others simply turn off the Television set. Still, some of you, like me, cling to the belief that the West Indies can again be a great cricketing region – nation.
But let’s talk about fixing West Indies Cricket. Before we attempt to fix it, we need to agree on what has gone amiss:
Most of the analysis in the media and the articles written about the demise of West Indies cricket would seem to be accurate.
- They say we did not have a plan to replace the great players like Viv Richards, Garry Sobers, Joel Garner and even Brian Lara.
- The Board of Directors is not a homogenous organization
- Other nations improved while we were sleeping at the wheel
- And on and on
Whatever the diagnosis, the point is we are currently ranked Number 8 out of the top 10 cricketing nations. We need to focus on improving our ranking as our first priority.
So let me take you fast forward to today. On Friday we lost to Zimbabwe by more than 30 runs. On Sunday we beat Zimbabwe by 110 runs. Today we beat Zimbabwe again by 6 wickets. We would want to ask which is the real West Indies team. The good and bad news is that they are the same team and no, they are not a schizoid team. What we know about our team are:
1. They are young – with the departure of Brian Lara to Mumbai we now have the second youngest team in the world.
2. Our athletes are small. There are only two members of the team above 200 pounds and 5 feet 11 inches. Australia and South Africa, on the other hand, have a player size-average that is significantly higher than ours.
3. They are different. They are, therefore, very different from the players of the Sobers era, different from the Lloyd team. They are different. Their issues are similar to the issues confronting young people globally and we in the public seem to have been unable to understand what makes them excel and they, on the other hand, seem unable to understand why we don’t understand them.
There is essentially, therefore, a disconnect between the players present culture and values and that of the nostalgic cricketing public including the WICB, the regional media and the Legends.
How do you think a West Indies player feels being on the team today? You think he is happy, honoured and excited? You think he is sad, proud, scared and unsure of himself? Well for those of you willing to take that multiple choice question, it is all of the above. Our players are young and impressionable and that means they can be tentative – in that kind of environment, young people do not feel loved or appreciated. I can assure you through my conversations with them that they are all proud to be player in the rich legacy of West Indies cricket but from their perspective, here is how they feel. They believe that the Legends, who they admire, and whose big shoes they are trying to fill have no confidence in them or no time for them. They believe that the media is especially hard on them.
They believe that the public has essentially given up on them. They believe that the Board does not respect them or are not proud of them.
They are not saying that the reactions by these stakeholders are not perhaps justified. They are simply reaching out for some understanding and some “love”. I am asking you today, “Can we give them some love?” For those of you not familiar with the phrase, it comes from the BET generation.
The WICB has begun that process of giving some love. For the first time in recent history both the President and the CEO have met the teams and spent extensive time with them. I, in particular, participated in the recently concluded training camp in Barbados. We took five days off the technical workshop and replaced on-field exercises with classroom programmes. The curriculum covered leadership skills, team-building exercises, confidence building and communications.
In a post-assessment exercise, 90% of those interviewed expressed a deep appreciation for the training and all indicated that they had benefited immensely from the classroom exercises. This is the first step.
The second phase of this ongoing process will include the development of a comprehensive regional academy with the High Performance Centre located at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies and up to ten coordinated campuses located throughout the region to deliver standardized programmes and curricula. We are aggressively seeking funding of US$20 million for the entire system for five years and are currently in negotiation with a regional corporation for $10 million and the outlook is promising.
How can the regional media “show some love”? Maybe instead of doing a full-page on Federer, who is a great tennis player, we should probably look deep down and find a human interest story on a local cricketer with promise from Dublance, Dominica, Siparia, Trinidad, May Pen, Jamaica or Soufriere, St Vincent. And perhaps we should remind readers that (a) the West Indies still has one of its batsmen among the top ten in the world (Chanderpaul) (b) the West Indies still has a bowler among the top ten in the world (Collymore) (c) the West Indies still has two of the top ten all rounders in Test Cricket in the world (Bravo and Gayle) (d) the West Indies still has one of the top ten batsmen in ODIs (Chanderpaul) (e) we still have the third-best all rounder in the world (Chris Gayle).
In effect, the West Indies has five players in 5 of the 6 categories for which individual cricketers are ranked. Given the fact that we are a team struggling at the bottom of the international cricket pyramid that is not all bad. Cricket is a lucrative career path.
The regional media can help define the role of cricket as a professional sport and the economic benefits to be derived by players who enter the career path of international cricket. That kind of information has the potential to attract young athletes who may have selected football instead of cricket as a career. In the past young Caribbean athletes would select track and field and other American based sports in order to secure athletic scholarships in the hope of making a career out of that selected sport. Today we can add Cricket to that list, because an athlete can become a prosperous international professional cricketer without migrating to North America. We at the WICB plan to work with regional higher education institutions to encourage them to award cricket scholarships to athletes. In my former role as president of COSTAATT, I initiated a scholarship program for Trinidad national cricketers which proved to be very successful.
I am confident that other Universities and Colleges in the region will play their part in providing scholarships, but the media can play a significant part by encouraging our youth and our governments to make cricket a priority sport in each territory.
Cricket is not only a game for us; it is a cultural economic and yes political phenomena. The notion of national insularity however still manifests itself within the region,
You can help minimize that propensity to put country before team. I say minimize because I don’t think in our life time we could eliminate the culture of insularity, because we are all proud of our flag and national anthem. But unity amongst the nations of the West Indies is a lofty goal that we all should seek, one that will go a long way in helping shape the culture and values of our young West Indies cricket team of tomorrow.
You can also help West Indies cricket by calling the CEO with your ideas, I realize that it is your job to ask questions, but you should also feel free at all times to also give answers and you can do that by sharing your ideas with us. For in the final analysis you are an intrinsic part of West Indies Cricket. Thank you for listening.
-- West Indies Cricket Board CEO Dr. Donald Peters addressed the Association of Caribbean Media Workers at their Annual General Meeting in Trinidad on Tuesday, December 4, 2007