In the in­au­gur­al col­umn of this se­ries (Au­gust 4, 2019), Dr Ak­shai Mans­ingh, Dean of the UWI Fac­ul­ty of Sport, stat­ed that the fac­ul­ty was com­mit­ted to a sym­bi­ot­ic re­la­tion­ship be­tween it­self and sport­ing bod­ies to en­hance a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of sport in the re­gion. As the Project Of­fi­cer in the fac­ul­ty, I wish to take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to elab­o­rate on this as­pect of the fac­ul­ty’s thrust and share the sig­nif­i­cant strides we have made in the short pe­ri­od since its in­cep­tion.

The fac­ul­ty has col­lab­o­rat­ed with Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) to de­vel­op its Crick­et Coach­ing Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Pro­gramme. In Ju­ly 2019, the first Lev­el Two Coach­ing course was com­plet­ed in Guyana with 27 par­tic­i­pants. The last time such a course was de­liv­ered by CWI was eight years ago. This ac­com­plish­ment in­volved a UWI-led process which start­ed in late 2017, when an analy­sis of the ex­ist­ing crick­et cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in the West In­dies was un­der­tak­en, fol­lowed by a com­par­a­tive analy­sis of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of­fered in Eng­land and Aus­tralia. Eng­lish and Aus­tralian cer­ti­fi­ca­tion were cho­sen be­cause of their stature in world crick­et and the fact that dur­ing the eight-year gap with­out CWI cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, those na­tions were called up­on to fa­cil­i­tate cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in the West In­dies.

I would like to thank CWI Di­rec­tor of Crick­et Jim­my Adams, CWI Project Of­fi­cer Fawwaz Baksh, Dean Mans­ingh, Kei­th Tom­lins (Ar­chi­tect for Eng­land’s coach­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion), Ry­er­son Bha­goo and Ke­sha­va Ram­phal for their sup­port and con­tri­bu­tions to the de­liv­ery of the Lev­el Two Coach­ing course. In the en­su­ing months and year, the fac­ul­ty and CWI will re­view and bench­mark the Lev­el Three Coach­ing course, which is in­tend­ed to com­plete CWI’s coach­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path­way from Foun­da­tion Lev­el to Lev­el Three.

It is the am­bi­tion of the UWI Fac­ul­ty of Sport to con­tin­u­ous­ly build ca­pac­i­ty in prac­ti­tion­ers in sport, ad­min­is­tra­tors, ath­letes and stu­dent-ath­letes alike. In a prac­ti­cal sense, a team man­ag­er or li­ai­son of­fi­cer should have a min­i­mum stan­dard of train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to ful­fil such roles and these roles should align with glob­al best prac­tices.

In the spir­it of col­lab­o­ra­tion and de­vel­op­ment of sport in the re­gion, the Fac­ul­ty of Sport blazed a trail with its in­au­gur­al World Uni­ver­si­ties T20 Crick­et Tour­na­ment in Jan­u­ary 2019. This tour­na­ment brought to­geth­er five uni­ver­si­ty teams, in­clud­ing USA (Com­bined) and Ox­ford MC­CU. This was a very strate­gic move. While crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tors fo­cus on pro­mot­ing the view­er­ship and prof­itabil­i­ty of the var­i­ous leagues and tour­na­ments, there re­mains a glar­ing void in play­er de­vel­op­ment at the ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion lev­el. The de­mand for pro­fes­sion­al play­ers con­tin­ues to out­pace tal­ent de­vel­op­ment and prepa­ra­tion for tran­si­tion­ing play­ers in­to pro­fes­sion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et. The UWI World Uni­ver­si­ties T20 Tour­na­ment is poised to play a crit­i­cal role in both ar­eas. This tour­na­ment is the on­ly one of its kind at the ter­tiary tier, pro­vid­ing much-need­ed ex­po­sure and com­pet­i­tive groom­ing for play­ers who re­quire same to ad­vance in­to pro­fes­sion­al crick­et.

This year, with sup­port from our spon­sors, the UWI World Uni­ver­si­ties T20 Tour­na­ment 2019 not on­ly pro­vid­ed the plat­form for play­ers from five uni­ver­si­ty teams to com­pete and de­vel­op, it al­so led to a UWI agree­ment with CWI and the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for five of the best uni­ver­si­ty play­ers (bats­man, spin­ner, fast bowler, wick­et-keep­er and field­er) from this tour­na­ment to train and de­vel­op along­side five CPL Fran­chise teams in 2019. More sig­nif­i­cant­ly, it cre­at­ed a re­al con­duit for stu­dent ath­letes to ef­fec­tive­ly tran­si­tion from am­a­teurs in­to pro­fes­sion­als. Trinida­di­an fast bowler Jalarnie Sear­les joins Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers; Vin­cent­ian Keron Cot­toy, ranked the best field­er in the tour­na­ment, was picked from the main play­er draft and joined the St Kitts Nevis Pa­tri­ots; the best bats­man Christo­pher McBride from the UK joins Ja­maica Tallawahs; Do­minic Clut­ter­buck from the UK, the best spin­ner, joins Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents and James Se­ward, al­so from the UK, joins Guyana Ama­zon War­riors to pur­sue their de­vel­op­men­tal op­por­tu­ni­ties. Hope­ful­ly, CWI, CPL, CPL fran­chis­es and stake­hold­ers will all view this tour­na­ment as a feed­er and/or nurs­ery where young tal­ent­ed play­ers are un­earthed and har­nessed.

The UWI in­tends to host the World Uni­ver­si­ties T20 Tour­na­ment every two years with the bless­ings of the In­ter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty Sports Fed­er­a­tion, FISU Amer­i­ca and its part­ners. With the par­tic­i­pa­tion of teams from uni­ver­si­ties across the world on a first come first served ba­sis, the UWI T20 crick­et tour­na­ment will not on­ly ad­vance stu­dent crick­eters but al­so pro­vide in­com­pa­ra­ble aca­d­e­m­ic and non-aca­d­e­m­ic net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to them in ad­di­tion to cre­at­ing an av­enue to en­hance the in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion of the par­tic­i­pat­ing uni­ver­si­ties. This tour­na­ment will be a fo­cal point or “meet­ing of the minds” in the area of lead­er­ship in sport at the ter­tiary lev­el, which is ex­pect­ed to con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to­wards tal­ent de­vel­op­ment, glob­al net­work­ing and re­la­tion­ship build­ing.

Daren Gan­ga is the Project Of­fi­cer, Fac­ul­ty of Sport, UWI. He can be reached at daren.gan­ga@sta.uwi.edu