The CARICOM Regional Cricket Conference at the Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain under the banner Reinvigorating West Indies Cricket began this morning with an unyielding reminder by its chairman, Dr Keith Rowley, of the region’s dominance of the game.
As Dr Rowley, who is also the chairman of the CARICOM prime ministerial sub-committee on cricket delivered opening remarks at the historic meeting of minds he put the question to his audience of why such a meeting has become necessary.
“It is because our Caribbean nation is lifted when we win, when we play well and we are depressed when we don’t do well in cricket.’
Dr Rowley added, “We are not the first nation to have had issues with our game but what is bringing this conference to a reality today is our understanding that unlike other nations that have had downs in their cricket history we in the Caribbean seem to be taking a very long time to come out.”
Acknowledging that the West Indies is among the smallest test-playing nations by population size, Dr Rowley issued a reminder of all that the regional team has managed to achieve.
“There is something about us in the Caribbean that might be special in this game. Because we can play this game. Sir Gary Sobers had the record for many many years for the most runs and then Brian Lara broke that record and broke it again,” he said.
“We can play this game and that is why we should not give up on this game. This conference in Trinidad and Tobago at this time is precisely for that purpose. Signaling that we do not intend to give up on cricket. We intend to defend it and we intend to play the game to the highest level and we’ll get back to the top.”
“We sent a team to Australia recently. Babes. They destroyed the strongest Australian team. We can play this game.”
Over the next two days the CARICOM conference will see contributions from several of Dr Rowley’s ministerial colleagues and other leading minds on the game of cricket from past and present players to a wide range of administrators and other experts.