The poster POINT was so right

Don't expect any improvement in WI cricket until we improve our domestic cricket

Our players do not play enough cricket at the domestic level. plain and simple

When we were great, most of our players were playing in England.

The English got smart and limited the number of WI cricketers in their domestic cricket.

To this day, WICB has not found it necessary to fill in this void

This is not complicated.

In reply to Cuter

Correct is right

In reply to Cuter


Now some or best players are playing FOR England.

In reply to Cuter



I’ll keep things simplistic because I’m not one to read or write really long posts.

Those days of playing in England , most colonies were fresh off of independence. England had the best infrastructure where a cricketer could ply his trade on the professional level-exposed to the best.

Case study: India
They now have the money, the infrastructure. They make players so rich in a single format that they can give up their learnings (which were some takeaways from county cricket) and retire on the international level.

Interjection- Yagga, Kalli, Mikey, Croft, Big Bird, Curtly, Duj, were very good to great before ever playing league or county cricket. Based on the trajectory of their careers and when those who did play county started, there's nothing to suggest they couldn't/wouldn't be great without English pro cricket. Our problems are poor school/youth cricket, community, club structures. As lil bways by the time you were 8 bigger lads or men would let you know if yuh bowling s... or batting like yuh foot bruk. Then, they'd show you what to do. Today, players reach senior team with no batting technique, poor bowling discipline and can't field!

In reply to Brerzerk

Agreed. There is an even longer list of players that were of international standard before they got county contracts. We need to live with the reality that many of our current players will not get county contracts and that the domestic level still needs to be improved. My suggestion is that we invest in A and B team tours so that those guys will hopefully raise the domestic level when they get back home. Same way that we saw Silva and Imlach making big runs this year.

In reply to PalsofMine

Instead of remedial work with FC players go back to grassroots. Schools , community and clubs. No sugar estates anymore so more vibrant community cricket needed. Allan Rae in Yard ensured CDC teams got looked at just like HS teams. That's how Yagga was ID'ed for U19 before joining Kensington. In his 1st Autbio Holding said that back then there was no tougher U19 tourney than WI regionals.

In reply to Brerzerk




Agree with all this. You learned more outside of organized games. Almost all played on unprepared wickets, where you learn to adapt to conditions, before you got to play on school teams.

In reply to Brerzerk

You are 100 % correct, West Indians and other resurrected English county cricket back in the1960 and1970.Sir Gary said this on many occasions, we a had one of best domestic tournament in the 60s to the 90s and we assist every nation in building/ improving their domestic league. Now we are struggling no one in putting a program in place to help us.

Discipline was different in those days.

Players knew that they had to take responsibility for their training.
Gordon Greenidge was seen jogging n the streets of Barbados at nights.

Carlisle Best played beach cricket and curry goat cricket at Deacons on evenings outside of the cricket season.
Best even play tennis ball cricket on Sunday mornings at Brandon/Brighton Beach.
I took part in some of these games.
I personally played with Best on Deacons Courts.
We play tape ball (tennis balls wrapped with electrical tape).
Batsmen had to use gloves and pads as the bowlers were rapid.

Best was known as a happy-hooker then,
Losing many balls with that shot.

In those days, unless the weather was bad,
You could not drive pass any field or back roads without see cricket.

Children nowadays play with computers and cell phones.

A major part of our failure is
The lack of leadership qualities among the various administration,
who failed to strategic plan.

In reply to Brerzerk

The point is, its not like we don't create talented players.

They just don't spend enough time perfecting their craft at the domestic level.

We see them doing very well at the under-19s, yet they just cannot transition this talent to the international level. Why?

We see players averaging in the 20s being called up for international cricket. Why?

Our demestic competition is simply too short to develop good quality players averaging in the 40s

By the time a player realises there is a flaw in his technique, the season is over.

It doesn't give our players time to concentrate on working on their deficiencies over a prolonged period of time.

In every activity, a person gets better when they consistently practice over a long period of time.

Do you really believe that one short 4-day tournament a year will provide quality players to compete with India, Australia and England?

I stopped following WI cricket a long time ago because I expect our cricket to continue struggling for the next 50 years if this is not addressed.

In reply to Chrissy

I see you are still going strong!

In reply to Cuter

Saying this is so vague. It has been repeated time and time again, but how do we do that? This is where no one is providing answers, except the frequent calls to change governance structure; fire this coach and that coach; bring on the past players. All these things are said loosely each day with no definite clue as to how to actually affect them. You see, we must understand where we went wrong, in the first case, and then work on correcting that. A common call is to go back to the grassroots. That is a noble call, but what are the grassroots, and what actually happened there? That understanding of the grassroots and how we all contributed to its destruction, is the first step in our efforts to change things. That grassroots matter is an important one, but we have the wrong concept.

In reply to Besar



This is where our well-paid administrators have failed us.

This is so obvious! Our players do not play enough domestic cricket.

We should be touring New Zealand for 3 test matches in December.
When was the 4-day Tornament?
What is the criteria for team selection?
A three-week training camp with players averaging in the 20s in domestic cricket will have us defeat NEW Zealand?
This is such a big joke!!!

In reply to Cuter

You're missing the point! Our club cricket i.e. GT county and zone, Bims 1st Division and Yards Senior cup were all stronger than any English League. It trained our talents to be great. Duj and many other test and FC stalwarts never played a single league nor county game but became and stayed great. The fundamentals were learned before 15yo and became muscle memory. And yes, weekend club cricket and personal training discipline kept men good and great. There have been WI players who never left home unless on test or FC duties but were better than many a county and Ranji player
Quality o er quantity. We don't just have the mentors nor enough disciplined youths in good structures now while other countries keep improving their's. You think any club except an academy has say an Arthur Barrett showing a 14yr old Mikey Holding how to hold the ball to achieve what?

In reply to Brerzerk



I take your point. I've moved on from that. You may well be right. However, it's clearly not the same now.



Ain't we saying the same thing?

An English cricketer makes a living in his Domestic league. What has our cricket administrators done for our FC Cricketers? bare minimum.
will we ever be able to compete with England?

In reply to Cuter

welcome back

In reply to Cuter

Like you I have been begging for a longer FC tourney One team picked from among.all the U23 who were near picks for franchise/country, create a WI 2nd XI, then all the avaU19's not in the academy XI or a Franchise
Fund them with home base proper coaching and play home and away games.It is taking WI sometimes 10 yrs to produce a 20+avg batsman from U19 to test. But youth/club cricket is root of problem

In reply to Brerzerk


Club cricket in Barbados was an amateur sport, and I was reminded of it by Sir Everton.
It is a fallacy to think otherwise.

English Leagues often had 1 pro per team... clubs had many fc players and test stars come home grung full

In reply to nick2020


thanks Mate

Point was verbose... but he was right

In reply to pooranian

Where is Point anyway?

In reply to Cuter

The Point will not turn up his boys are large and are in charge not a word from the redundant Point.