A two-day re­gion­al con­fer­ence on West In­dies crick­et start­ed on Thurs­day in Trinidad with stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and ad­min­is­tra­tors, seek­ing to de­vel­op strate­gies to rein­vig­o­rate the sport that once had the Caribbean at the pin­na­cle on the glob­al stage.

Trinidad & To­ba­go prime min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, the host of the con­fer­ence, which has been or­gan­ised by Cari­com, em­pha­sised the “cul­tur­al and emo­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance” of crick­et in the Caribbean, link­ing na­tion­al pride to the per­for­mance of the team over sev­er­al decades.

“West In­dies crick­et cre­ates a strange na­tion, but it’s an ef­fec­tive one be­cause we have been world lead­ers in this game that we love so much,” Row­ley said dur­ing the open­ing ad­dress at­tend­ed by icons of the sport such as Sir Clive Lloyd and Sir Vi­vian Richards.

“And you may ask, why is it im­por­tant for us to want a rein­vig­o­ra­tion of West In­dies crick­et? It is be­cause our Caribbean na­tion is lift­ed when we win when we play well, and we are de­pressed, and we don’t do well in crick­et.”

Row­ley, the chair­man of the Cari­com prime min­is­te­r­i­al sub-com­mit­tee on crick­et, said there were “chal­lenges in crick­et man­age­ment”, and he not­ed “dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the cur­rent man­age­ment of West In­dies crick­et”, while high­light­ing is­sues both on and off the field.

“We are not the first na­tion to have had is­sues with our game, but what drove this con­fer­ence to its re­al­i­ty to­day is an im­pa­tience and an un­der­stand­ing that, un­like oth­er na­tions that have had downs in their crick­et his­to­ry, we in the Caribbean seem to be tak­ing a very long time to come out of our down­turn in crick­et,” he said.

“Many West In­di­ans don’t re­alise that. We are, in fact, the small­est pop­u­la­tion of peo­ple who are play­ing this game and want­i­ng to com­pete at the high­est lev­el and hav­ing set records of all kinds. But there’s some­thing about us in the Caribbean that might be spe­cial in this game be­cause we could play this game.”

Row­ley said that there was al­so “the need to un­der­stand and man­age crick­et not on­ly as a sport but al­so as a busi­ness” with a call for pro­fes­sion­al man­age­ment of re­sources.

He sug­gest­ed that the con­fer­ence con­duct a SWOT analy­sis to bet­ter un­der­stand the strengths, weak­ness­es, op­por­tu­ni­ties, and threats fac­ing West In­dies crick­et.

In his ad­dress, Row­ley said there was a need to re­vis­it the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) con­tract to en­sure it is “fair and ben­e­fi­cial” for West In­dies crick­et.

“One op­por­tu­ni­ty lost is to be in a po­si­tion to en­sure that in the bil­lion-dol­lar in­dus­try, in the mon­ey-mak­ing part of the busi­ness that we are there to own,” he said.

“I want to say to­day that in the in­ter­est of West In­dies crick­et and man­ag­ing re­sources that are avail­able to us or should be avail­able to us, that it is ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial for Crick­et West In­dies to re­open the CPL con­tract and to look at the re­sources avail­able to West In­dies crick­et. That lop­sided con­tract must not stand.”

Row­ley al­so warned the re­gion of the threat of los­ing crick­et cul­ture if fa­cil­i­ties such as crick­et fields and nets are not main­tained in schools and com­mu­ni­ties.

He said de­spite the myr­i­ad man­age­ment is­sues that have faced the sport in the Caribbean, play­ers of­ten unite ef­fec­tive­ly as a team, sug­gest­ing that the prob­lems rest with ad­min­is­tra­tion rather than with team spir­it.

He al­so called for a com­mit­ment to strate­gic plan­ning to en­sure the fu­ture suc­cess and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of West In­dies crick­et.

CMC