Sean Nero

The Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty's de­sire to have West In­dies crick­et re­turn to its pre­vi­ous glo­ry is not un­re­al­is­tic, but ad­min­is­tra­tors of the pop­u­lar sport must first take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their nu­mer­ous short­com­ings and ul­ti­mate fail­ings, says leg­endary bats­man Bri­an Charles Lara.

In his view, on­ly then can they im­ple­ment the req­ui­site sys­tems to de­vel­op struc­tures that would en­hance the team's per­for­mance and re­claim the re­spect pre­vi­ous­ly held.

"It's a dif­fi­cult propo­si­tion for any­body to lead the West In­dies team, es­pe­cial­ly with the ad­min­is­tra­tion how di­vid­ed they are on oc­ca­sions, the lob­by­ing when try­ing to pick a board and many dif­fer­ent things. It is an un­re­al sit­u­a­tion for any young man to han­dle, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing a bad time," Lara said.

He made the re­marks while speak­ing on the top­ic Tak­ing Charge at The Guardian Sport Desk's four-day sym­po­sium present­ly tak­ing place at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre in St Ann's, Port-of-Spain.

"We take good tal­ent in the West In­dies and make it or­di­nary, while peo­ple abroad take or­di­nary tal­ent and make it good. I still be­lieve we have the best young crick­eters in the world. Back in the 60s, 70s and 80s crick­et was a skill game. Skill and fit­ness was very im­por­tant to­wards per­for­mance and the West In­dies crick­eters were the most skil­ful team and the fittest, and they went around the world beat­ing peo­ple," he said.

The for­mer cap­tain added: "I think in the 90s tech­nol­o­gy took over and we laid no foun­da­tion as ad­min­is­tra­tors to en­sure that we moved with the time. We al­ways thought a next 'Sir Viv' was around the cor­ner; a Joel Gar­ner was go­ing to pop up. Yes! They did! But peo­ple learnt about West In­dies crick­et. Peo­ple went back home, did stud­ies and worked on us. That is when the de­cline start­ed...the fact that we re­lied on nat­ur­al tal­ent and not ad­vanc­ing our game, not cre­at­ing an in­fra­struc­ture for grass-root crick­et; not do­ing any­thing tech­nol­o­gy-wise to en­sure that we are up there with the very best."

He re­flect­ed on his tenure as cap­tain of the Windies and de­clared to an au­di­ence of 300 teenagers that it was one of his most dif­fi­cult as­sign­ments and when googling his name, the sta­tis­tics would show that he was not a very good cap­tain.

Lara was con­vinced that had the West In­dies Crick­et Board of Con­trol de­vel­oped sys­tems that re­lat­ed to prop­er suc­ces­sion plan­ning, tal­ent re­cruit­ment and the en­hance­ment of tech­niques the tremen­dous suc­cess en­joyed in the 60s, 70s and 80s might have re­mained un­chal­lenged.

"When I en­tered West In­dies crick­et, we weren't beat­ing teams as con­vinc­ing­ly as we were in the past. If you are ac­cus­tomed beat­ing Eng­land five-nil, all of a sud­den you are draw­ing two all. Then, there is some kind of de­cline. I would not have been the first cap­tain to have faced any in­su­lar­i­ty in the Caribbean. From that point in time (the 90s) you could feel the ten­sion with­in the team at every port. It's a very dif­fi­cult thing when you are not suc­cess­ful," he said.

Lara con­tin­ued, "I know we are on a five- or six-match win against some pret­ty or­di­nary teams, but hope­ful­ly in the fu­ture we will have some peo­ple, good thinkers, for­ward thinkers who would do things to en­sure that we har­ness the tal­ent."

He cit­ed Adri­an Barath's rise and the fact that he scored a Test cen­tu­ry on his de­but, not just against any team, but against the best in the world, Aus­tralia, on that con­ti­nent.

"To­day, he is not even ply­ing his trade with the na­tion­al team any­more. Why? Are we go­ing to blame Adri­an Barath alone or was it some­thing that was not put in­to place to en­sure that such a won­der­ful star could be main­tained?

"There are a lot more leagues go­ing on around the world and peo­ple are pay­ing less at­ten­tion to what is go­ing on in West In­dies crick­et. The guys are a lot more pro­fes­sion­al. Chris Gayle is play­ing all over the world, so is Dwayne Bra­vo and Kieron Pol­lard. I be­lieve that when they come to­geth­er there is less ten­sion. No­body is wor­ried about mak­ing a dol­lar or where their ca­reer is go­ing be­cause there are a lot more op­tions," said Lara.