The mil­lion-dol­lar ques­tion every­one must be ask­ing is: “How can Crick­et West In­dies im­ple­ment a high per­for­mance sys­tem with lim­it­ed fi­nan­cial re­sources while grap­pling with the ef­fects of COVID-19?”

Us­ing the old adage “nev­er waste a good cri­sis”, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has forced us to pause, re­set, re­flect and plan. Tech­nol­o­gy has fa­cil­i­tat­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­nec­tiv­i­ty. Glob­al sport has had to piv­ot and new ideas and in­no­va­tions launched as a di­rect re­sponse to the glob­al stand-still con­se­quent on COVID-19.

The first step in the cre­ation and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the high per­for­mance sys­tem is to know what you have and where you are. An au­dit of all of the avail­able re­sources, i.e. per­son­nel, fa­cil­i­ties, equip­ment, ex­ist­ing pro­grammes, spe­cial­ist sup­port ser­vices with­in Crick­et West In­dies and every ter­ri­to­r­i­al board, should be un­der­tak­en. This au­dit would high­light the strengths and short­falls. Up­on com­ple­tion of the au­dit, spe­cif­ic and tai­lored rec­om­men­da­tions in terms of high per­for­mance in­puts should be made so as to avoid cost­ly du­pli­ca­tion of ef­fort and re­sources.

The next phase is the plan. The cre­ation of a de­tailed plan for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the sys­tem across the Caribbean. This would re­quire the wide-scale en­gage­ment of all stake­hold­ers. The plan should in­clude both op­er­a­tional and strate­gic com­po­nents. Crit­i­cal to this ex­er­cise is the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the aims and ob­jec­tives to be achieved, the strate­gies need­ed to meet the ob­jec­tives and the eval­u­a­tion meth­ods to be used to mea­sure the suc­cess of the per­for­mance. The ef­fec­tive co­or­di­na­tion and man­age­ment of all of the com­po­nents of the high per­for­mance plan and the re­al-time man­age­ment of the bud­getary and hu­man re­source com­po­nents are es­sen­tial for the suc­cess­ful ex­e­cu­tion of the plan.

Im­ple­men­ta­tion of the plan re­quires the es­tab­lish­ment of a High Per­for­mance Di­vi­sion at CWI with sim­i­lar de­part­ments cre­at­ed in every re­gion­al fran­chise and ter­ri­to­r­i­al board. This di­vi­sion and re­spec­tive high per­for­mance de­part­ments will pro­vide tech­ni­cal and man­age­r­i­al sup­port to coach­es, play­ers and ad­min­is­tra­tors.

Sys­tem Sup­ports Cen­tre

De­spite the suc­cess of the West In­dies High Per­for­mance Cen­tre (WIH­PC) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in Bar­ba­dos and the ben­e­fits that in­di­vid­ual play­ers se­lect­ed for the res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme de­rived, there was a no­table ab­sence of sim­i­lar high per­for­mance pro­grammes in oth­er Caribbean is­lands.

The fran­chis­es are in­te­gral to the de­vel­op­ment of a sus­tain­able and ef­fec­tive high per­for­mance sys­tem where not on­ly a se­lect few ben­e­fit, but all play­ers in the fran­chise sys­tem can en­hance their per­for­mance through ex­po­sure to cut­ting edge high per­for­mance pro­grammes.

The high per­for­mance di­vi­sion and de­part­ments will aid fran­chis­es in de­sign­ing struc­tures and pro­grammes to cre­ate a sus­tain­able and ef­fi­cient high per­for­mance mod­el for every crick­et­ing as­so­ci­a­tion in the re­gion. Build­ing on what fran­chis­es have al­ready im­ple­ment­ed, we can en­hance and ed­u­cate in or­der to build lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty to de­liv­er in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes.

The in­vest­ment in the Coolidge Crick­et Ground was es­sen­tial. The re­gion needs sev­er­al high per­for­mance cen­tres as part of the sys­tem. Coolidge, UWI Black­birds High Per­for­mance Cen­tre in Bar­ba­dos and oth­er UWI satel­lite cen­tres are all very im­por­tant. These cen­tres will com­prise mod­ern, state-of-the-art fa­cil­i­ties for skills train­ing, in­clu­sive of in­door crick­et cen­tres out­fit­ted with high per­for­mance train­ing equip­ment, video cam­eras and analy­sis rooms. Cur­rent­ly, West In­dies teams as­sem­ble at the cen­tres at Coolidge and UWI for camps pri­or to tour­na­ments.

But we can ill af­ford to wait for the fi­nan­cial re­sources to ei­ther con­struct or en­hance such cen­tres. We can re­design and re­struc­ture our ap­proach to high per­for­mance de­vel­op­ment. Like the rest of the world, we can be proac­tive and use this time to form new part­ner­ships with gov­ern­ments, NGOs, uni­ver­si­ties and glob­al fund­ing agen­cies.

In or­der for Crick­et West In­dies to re­gain sus­tained dom­i­nance and com­pet­i­tive­ness in world crick­et, we must treat high per­for­mance de­vel­op­ment as a ma­jor pri­or­i­ty area re­quir­ing its own di­vi­sion and op­er­a­tion that link all of the main sec­tions of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

A well-de­fined struc­ture and sys­tem ad­min­is­tered by ex­pert and skilled prac­ti­tion­ers pro­vides the foun­da­tion for a resur­gence of West In­dies Crick­et that mil­lions of peo­ple in the re­gion have so deeply de­sired and are most de­serv­ing of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing.

Aman­da Reifer is Head, Cave Hill Acad­e­my of Sport and can be reached at Aman­da.Reifer@cave­hill.uwi.edu