Over his 11-year ca­reer which end­ed in 1991, Jef­frey Du­jon nev­er played in a West In­dies crick­et team that lost a Test se­ries. Dur­ing that pe­ri­od, the West In­dies won 15, with sev­en drawn in their 23 Test se­ries. Du­jon al­so played in a lim­it­ed overs team that won 14 straight se­ries be­tween 1980 and 1988. It is by far the most suc­cess­ful pe­ri­od in the team’s his­to­ry and ac­cord­ing to Du­jon “hold­ing each oth­er ac­count­able was key to the suc­cess of the side.

“I was so for­tu­nate, first of all, to be in a win­ning en­vi­ron­ment to start my ca­reer. And to be around so many great play­ers, and it was a team,” stress­es the wick­et-keep­er/bats­man, ar­guably the best ever for the West In­dies.

“You might be very sur­prised to know that not many of us used to hang out to­geth­er off the field. But you see when the um­pire said time, then it was a very, very sol­id unit every time.”–a les­son in co­he­sion to­wards a pur­pose.

Since the turn in­to the 2000s, the West In­dies have man­aged to win on­ly 22 of 85 con­test­ed Test se­ries, los­ing 52 of those.

Du­jon, who ap­peared as a com­men­ta­tor fol­low­ing his re­tire­ment from in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et, be­lieves the cur­rent struc­ture of re­gion­al crick­et is not pro­vid­ing the qual­i­ty need­ed to im­prove the in­ter­na­tion­al team.

“You have play­ers, even in my time, they come on­to the scene and they do well and then all of a sud­den, they stop do­ing well.”

The rea­son, he says; they be­come stag­nat­ed.

“The longer you play, the more peo­ple you play against, the more your weak­ness­es get iden­ti­fied and you have to un­der­stand what they are and how to work on them; this is the on­ly way that you can have a good chance of be­ing con­sis­tent,” ob­serves Du­jon.

Two sto­ries of two West In­di­an bats­men need to be told re­gard­ing learn­ing on the pitch. The great George Headley went to Aus­tralia as a pre­dom­i­nant­ly off-side bats­man. He scored a num­ber of big runs in­clud­ing a cou­ple cen­turies. The Aus­tralian bowlers caught on and kept the ball away from his favourite strokes. A se­ries of low scores fol­lowed. Headley recog­nised what was hap­pen­ing and worked on his on­side game to the point that the great Aus­tralian leg-spin­ner, Clar­rie Grim­mett, named Headley as the great­est on­side play­er he ever bowled to. More re­cent­ly, Lar­ry Gomes al­so found his on­side play want­i­ng, he went to the nets to cor­rect the flaw.

Du­jon adds that the qual­i­ty of skill is sim­ply not there: “In re­gion­al crick­et, the lit­tle bit that I have watched re­cent­ly, you get, say, three balls an over that you can re­al­ly score off.

“In Test crick­et, you might get one, every two overs. And in that time, you are be­ing ex­am­ined by the bet­ter bowlers, and they find out where is the best place to keep you qui­et and where they can frus­trate you.” In his view from be­hind and in front the stumps, “even­tu­al­ly, you get your­self out be­cause good balls very rarely get bats­men out, bats­men get them­selves out. And it's a lack of pa­tience, lack of con­cen­tra­tion, lack of aware­ness of what's go­ing on.”–a les­son for the cur­rent WI bats­men who through­out the T20 se­ries against the non-lethal bowl­ing of the Bangladeshi team, chased wide balls and played atro­cious shots im­me­di­ate­ly they ar­rived at the stumps.

The wick­et-keep­er to the great WI de­mon bowlers be­lieves that crick­et in the var­i­ous ter­ri­to­ries across the re­gion is weak, “so, one of the things I think that's miss­ing now is that the club sys­tem is not what it used to be. And I don't know if the knowl­edge of the game has been passed down to the sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions the way it used to be. Added to the fact now that some of these guys play the game, but for a dif­fer­ent rea­son.”

Du­jon says the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of T20 crick­et and oth­er white-ball vari­a­tions is eat­ing away at the core val­ues of rep­re­sen­ta­tive crick­et, at least in the West In­dies.

“You know, es­pe­cial­ly the young guys, be­cause they're look­ing at all the mon­ey that's at the end of the road, the in­ter­est in un­der­stand­ing the game is not there. When I played I nev­er played for mon­ey; I played for the love of the game.

“Quite a num­ber of them, in my ex­pe­ri­ence, you try to pass your ex­pe­ri­ences and knowl­edge down and they don't re­al­ly want to lis­ten.

“It’s the mon­ey com­ing in­to crick­et be­cause a lot of these guys be­lieve that they have al­ready ar­rived be­cause they're mak­ing a liv­ing out of the game. And hence, you know, they don't think they have to im­prove.”

The right-hand­ed bats­man who scored five Test cen­turies in a line-up of great bats­men, did quite an amount of coach­ing af­ter re­tire­ment points to his first-hand ac­count of deal­ing with con­tem­po­rary play­ers: “I've ex­pe­ri­enced that per­son­al­ly, where I'd be try­ing to talk to young play­ers, try­ing to pass on some­thing to help them and they're just wait­ing for you to fin­ish talk­ing. So, you know, that's one of the frus­tra­tions that I've had which is why I'm re­al­ly no longer in­volved in the game.”

There are lessons to be learnt and chal­lenges to be re­spond­ed to by those who ad­min­is­ter Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) giv­en by one who was part of the great­est ever crick­et team.

Sunil Ramdeen – for­mer news jour­nal­ist, cur­rent ra­dio com­men­ta­tor on crick­et

I think this stale­mate is in it­self the clear­est ex­am­ple of why there is need for gov­er­nance re­form. Michael Jack­son prob­a­bly de­scribed the dilem­ma best; ‘I'm start­ing with the man in the mir­ror, I'm ask­ing him to change his ways.’ Clear­ly, the col­lec­tive ‘man’ has very dif­fer­ent views on what needs to be done to ‘change his ways.’

The ab­stain­ing mem­bers have said the ‘two pro­posed amend­ments that were to be tabled by CWI at the abort­ed meet­ing of De­cem­ber 6, 2024, were self-serv­ing and can­not and will not change the many is­sues af­fect­ing West In­dies crick­et both ad­min­is­tra­tive­ly and on the field of play’.

At the same time though, they pro­mot­ed on their own po­si­tion of ‘the in­tro­duc­tion of a ro­tat­ing pres­i­dent and a long-term crick­et de­vel­op­ment plan.’ The CWI lead­er­ship on hand has in­sist­ed that the meet­ing would have marked 'a crit­i­cal junc­ture in CWI’s on­go­ing ef­forts to strength­en its gov­er­nance struc­ture and po­si­tion West In­dies crick­et for fu­ture suc­cess.’ Let’s re­mem­ber as well that in March the CWI pres­i­dent did re­veal that ‘some res­o­lu­tions did not find favour with the ma­jor­i­ty on this oc­ca­sion,’ but that he re­mained ‘com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that CWI gov­er­nance struc­ture is al­ways at its most ro­bust.”

So clear­ly any con­ver­sa­tions/di­a­logue/ne­go­ti­a­tions in the sub­se­quent months were un­able to find com­mon ground. The fact is that ‘change’ is re­quired, and go­ing for­ward, full trans­paren­cy is go­ing to be crit­i­cal. Maybe the full agen­da of items for rat­i­fi­ca­tion and dis­cus­sion should be made pub­lic; that these are the four or five items up for dis­cus­sion, al­low them to mar­i­nate in the pub­lic for a cou­ple of weeks so that com­men­ta­tors, past play­ers, ad­min­is­tra­tors, fans and all stake­hold­ers can of­fer their opin­ions and feed­back, and then set a date for a meet­ing.

In that way, no one can use the ‘agen­da’ as an ex­cuse for not be­ing present, be­cause we would all know what it is, and the ‘con­stituents’ of these rep­re­sen­ta­tives would have been able to par­tic­i­pate in the process that im­pacts all who ral­ly ‘round the West In­dies.

An­dre Lawrence – crick­et an­a­lyst and coach

An­dre places his sharp fo­cus on three main ar­eas which he be­lieves will re­sult in a de­cid­ed im­prove­ment in West In­dies crick­et based on ques­tions put to him by the Sun­day Guardian.

One, the gov­er­nance struc­ture of re­gion­al crick­et must change. Cur­rent­ly, an 18-mem­ber team re­sem­bles that of an old-school crick­et club of the 60s. A small­er board of say one del­e­gate each from the six ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards, along with a few nom­i­nat­ed pro­fes­sion­als re­port­ing to a vice and chair­per­son will add a much greater lev­el of com­pe­ten­cy to the board. In short, run it more like a busi­ness en­ter­prise. The pro­posed gov­er­nance changes will make it eas­i­er for West In­dies crick­et to be seen as a “pub­lic good” rather than a pri­vate op­er­a­tion led by a cho­sen few.

Two, there must be a sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in youth acad­e­mies and the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the same. Long gone is the need for ded­i­cat­ed and cer­ti­fied pro­fes­sion­als guid­ing the vast tal­ent that ex­ists among the youth of the re­gion. The in­ter­na­tion­al game is mov­ing at warp speed, while WI crick­et de­vel­op­ment is me­an­der­ing along at a snail’s pace.

Three, re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of club crick­et is para­mount to the de­vel­op­ment of young pro­fes­sion­als pri­or to en­trance on­to the world stage. At present, our club play­ers are ar­riv­ing on the in­ter­na­tion­al scene se­vere­ly un­der­de­vel­oped and at­tempt­ing to learn the game on the job, hence the glar­ing spo­radic-like per­for­mances and re­sults.

To help this, an amend­ment of the con­sti­tu­tion of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards will en­sure that one en­ti­ty can­not rule and with­out suc­cess, for any length of time with­out be­ing held ac­count­able.

(Tony Rakhal-Fras­er con­tributed to his sto­ry)