JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Setting a new direction for West Indies

by

Alvin Corneal
2035 days ago
20190726
Alvin Corneal

Alvin Corneal

It is al­ways fair to al­low new­com­ers to im­ple­ment a new di­rec­tion to­wards any project and West In­dies crick­et is no dif­fer­ent, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter the ex­ec­u­tive have can­vassed in their elec­tion cam­paign to lead the great game of the Caribbean back to the top of crick­et world.

The chal­lenge that lies ahead could on­ly be de­scribed as com­plex, es­pe­cial­ly in the area that needs a me­thod­i­cal path which will fa­cil­i­tate the di­rect ben­e­fit for each coun­try in the Caribbean.

His­to­ry may be one of the es­sen­tial ar­eas where the pos­i­tives and neg­a­tives may di­vulge the path­way which mir­rored the fluc­tu­a­tion from the bril­liance of George Headley, through the fa­mous “three Ws,” to Garfield Sobers, Ro­han Kan­hai, Viv Richards, Wes Hall, Son­ny Ra­mad­him, Alf Valen­tine route, where the era was paved for Alvin Kalicha­ran, Gor­don Greenidge, Andy Roberts, Mal­colm Mar­shall, Curt­ley Am­brose and Bri­an Lara, and now ul­ti­mate fail­ure for the last decade or more to this day.

As pa­tri­ot­ic as the Caribbean crick­et lover has been over the years, the re­verse to­wards dis­ap­point­ment is dif­fi­cult to ac­cept, hence the rea­son why CWI pres­i­dent Ricky Sker­ritt and his ex­ec­u­tive should be­gin the plan to­wards an im­proved en­vi­ron­ment in the crick­et world from the ground up.

Over the years, the in­ten­si­ty of the com­pe­ti­tion among the is­lands was pos­i­tive­ly ef­fec­tive, where the strength of ad­min­is­tra­tive ca­pa­bil­i­ty cre­at­ed a won­der­ful at­mos­phere for the crick­eters them­selves and the fans as well.

<The ini­tial path to the fu­ture>

Us­ing the fa­mous for­mu­la ex­er­cised by the suc­cess­ful sport­ing dis­ci­plines, the first move will be to de­cide up­on the method which can bring the qual­i­ty of coach­ing to each and every Caribbean na­tion, all ex­posed to a path­way which will de­vel­op some form of sim­i­lar­i­ty to­wards the ba­sic fun­da­men­tals of the game, the ad­min­is­tra­tion to­geth­er with the the­o­ret­i­cal and tech­ni­cal needs.

This method starts with com­pe­tence and blue­print from the likes of Lind­say Grant, Alan Rae, John God­dard, Jef­frey Stollmey­er, Sir Frank Wor­rell, Sir Clyde Wal­cott and Berkley Gaskin among many oth­ers.

The as­sump­tion is that this de­part­ment could be im­proved through the use of some of the fine ex­po­nents of ad­min­is­tra­tion (sports es­pe­cial­ly), then the struc­tur­al pat­tern which could be used to pro­duce the qual­i­ty of coach­ing ed­u­ca­tion should be pro­vid­ed to the play­ers in the re­gion.

This could on­ly be done by hav­ing high-lev­el Caribbean coach­es placed in­to the var­i­ous coun­tries where the method­ol­o­gy of get­ting top-class in­for­ma­tion to the par­tic­i­pants, from the tiny tots to­wards the ul­ti­mate lev­el of the ge­nius­es of the past, will be ben­e­fi­cial and pro­duc­tive to all and es­pe­cial­ly our crick­et.

The com­pet­i­tive spir­it which of­ten ig­nites se­ri­ous com­mit­ment, pos­i­tive hu­man ap­proach to the lessons which are learnt and the psy­cho­log­i­cal merg­ing as a team must be ig­nit­ed.

Ex­pe­ri­ences of re­gion­al crick­et tour­na­ments have had the most suc­cess­ful of all, where the likes of Kan­hai, Fred­er­icks, Ca­ma­cho, Solomon and Butch­er had to match strides with Sobers, Nurse, against Hall, Grif­fith, Greenidge and Haynes and of course the three “Ws.”

From T&T, it was Bernard Julien, Tre­strail, Ra­mad­hin, Ro­driguez, Stollmey­er, Lar­ry Gomes and Lara who took the chal­lenge to the op­po­si­tion among many oth­ers. The Com­bined Is­lands pro­vid­ed a re­mark­able source of tal­ent­ed play­ers in Richards, Richard­son, Roberts and Am­brose, while the Ja­maicans gave us George Headley, Alan Rae, Lawrence Rowe, Court­ney Walsh, Mau­rice Fos­ter, Lester King and Mike Hold­ing.

The most suc­cess­ful method for coach­ing un­der these cir­cum­stances was the play­ers them­selves, whose com­pe­tence was recog­nised dur­ing all re­gion­al con­tests which at­tract­ed great crowds. A pic­ture is al­ways worth a mil­lion words and the mem­o­ries of an or­tho­dox stroke, an ex­cel­lent style and qual­i­ty bowl­ing, and the ba­sic ap­proach to im­prov­ing their field­ing re­main in our mem­o­ries.

This for­mu­la will bring back the great crowds, the true at­mos­phere need­ed for the play­ers and the ide­al sit­u­a­tion for all. The past can al­so help to im­prove the qual­i­ty of au­to­mat­ic coach­ing lessons for all the young po­ten­tial crick­et stars of to­mor­row and bring the game back to the lev­el it once was.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored