ST JOHN’S, An­tigua— Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) has launched a new scout­ing sys­tem that will re­ly heav­i­ly on da­ta to iden­ti­fy crick­et­ing tal­ent in the re­gion.

The new ini­tia­tive will see se­nior tal­ent man­agers, ter­ri­to­r­i­al tal­ent iden­ti­fiers (TTIDs), and a net­work of scouts work­ing to­geth­er to pro­vide a struc­tured, an­a­lyt­i­cal ap­proach.

Through CWI’s re­cent­ly ap­point­ed Se­nior Tal­ent Man­agers, Ja­mal Smith (male) and Ann Browne-John (fe­male), there will now be a ded­i­cat­ed and ro­bust re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for man­ag­ing se­nior play­er da­ta, col­lab­o­rat­ing with an­a­lysts, and as­sist­ing in se­lec­tion de­ci­sions.

They will work along­side six TTIDs: Hen­der­son Broomes (Bar­ba­dos), Ramnaresh Sar­wan (Guyana), Del­roy Mor­gan (Ja­maica), Samuel Spencer (Lee­ward Is­lands), Gibran Mo­hammed (Trinidad and To­ba­go), and Craig Em­manuel from the Wind­ward Is­lands.

With the on­go­ing West In­dies Cham­pi­onship as their first ma­jor as­sign­ment, the scout­ing team will en­sure that every per­for­mance is tracked, analysed, and re­port­ed, cre­at­ing a clear path­way for emerg­ing crick­eters to progress to the high­est lev­els.

Four re­gion­al scouts—Fer­nix Thomas (Do­mini­ca), Sta­cy-Ann Adams (St. Vin­cent), An­tho­ny Grey (Trinidad and To­ba­go), and Shane Jef­fers (St. Kitts)—will as­sist in eval­u­at­ing tal­ent dur­ing the West In­dies Cham­pi­onship.

CWI Di­rec­tor of Crick­et Miles Bas­combe said the ini­tia­tive rep­re­sent­ed a sig­nif­i­cant step to­ward pro­fes­sion­al­is­ing tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“We are mov­ing be­yond just re­ly­ing on what we see on score­cards. This sys­tem en­sures that per­for­mances are seen with con­text and with a fo­cus on the skill sets dis­played, tac­ti­cal acu­men, and game aware­ness,” Bas­combe said.

“We are col­lect­ing re­al-time da­ta, analysing per­for­mances con­sis­tent­ly, and mak­ing in­formed de­ci­sions about play­er de­vel­op­ment,” Bas­combe main­tained that the new sys­tem pro­vid­ed a fair and trans­par­ent struc­ture for all play­ers.

“Play­ers in the re­gion will now be seen and eval­u­at­ed by mul­ti­ple tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion op­er­a­tives, re­sult­ing in more in­for­ma­tion gath­er­ing and bet­ter-bal­anced da­ta on per­for­mances. With this ac­count­abil­i­ty met­ric in place, our net­work of scouts en­sures that no tal­ent goes un­no­ticed,” he point­ed out.

A ma­jor fea­ture of the new scout­ing sys­tem is its re­liance on ad­vanced an­a­lyt­ics.

Tal­ent scouts will use the Ath­lete Man­age­ment Sys­tem (AMS) to main­tain play­er depth charts, sub­mit per­for­mance re­ports, and track play­er pro­gres­sion. (CMC)