Crick­et West In­dies pres­i­dent, Dr Kishore Shal­low said the Cari­com con­fer­ence on the sport in the Caribbean can serve as a plat­form for “ac­knowl­edg­ing de­fi­cien­cies and ini­ti­at­ing change”.

The con­fer­ence, which is be­ing joint­ly host­ed by the T&T gov­ern­ment and Cari­com, opened on Thurs­day at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in the T&T cap­i­tal of Port-of-Spain.

Shal­low said there was a deep-root­ed cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance to West In­dies crick­et, high­light­ing its role as a uni­fy­ing force and source of re­gion­al pride – but he ac­knowl­edged there were is­sues af­fect­ing the sport in the Caribbean.

“De­spite its past dom­i­nance, West In­dies crick­et strug­gles to main­tain its glob­al sta­tus, fac­ing is­sues of in­su­lar­i­ty and na­tion­al­is­tic be­hav­iours,” he said dur­ing his open­ing ad­dress to the con­fer­ence.

“In fact, to the av­er­age fan, cer­tain­ly the younger gen­er­a­tion, our re­al­i­ty may even be per­plex­ing, won­der­ing, what are we talk­ing about? What great in­sti­tu­tion? If you’re on­ly just tun­ing in to West In­dies crick­et.

“Quite of­ten, I hear the ques­tion such as, how can an in­sti­tu­tion that held such dom­i­nance once up­on a time be so vul­ner­a­ble now? And why have we dom­i­nat­ed in every sin­gle for­mat of the game at some point, but yet there are still strug­gles for us to be in the top five of the world rank­ing?”

Shal­low said it was es­sen­tial that all con­cerned ac­cept and ac­knowl­edge the de­fi­cien­cies and chal­lenges to West In­dies crick­et that have been doc­u­ment­ed in var­i­ous texts to be­gin re­solv­ing them.

He added that though in­di­vid­ual bril­liance may be no­table, sus­tained suc­cess re­quired col­lec­tive ef­fort and un­der­stand­ing of roles with­in the team.

“So in or­der to pro­ceed with fix­ing or re­solv­ing our is­sues and chal­lenges, we have to ac­cept the de­fi­cien­cies,” he said. “Those di­ag­noses over the years in count­less texts that are so well doc­u­ment­ed and avail­able to us, we have to ac­cept what we need to fix.

“And I be­lieve this sym­po­sium is a start­ing point of ac­cept­ing the chal­lenges that we face, our short­falls over the years, the count­less sug­ges­tions made to us, in­clud­ing for­mer heads of gov­ern­ments, but cer­tain­ly crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tors, that these sug­ges­tions that have fall­en deaf over the years must now be ac­cept­ed.”

En­ti­tled “Rein­vig­o­rat­ing West In­dies Crick­et – A Sym­po­sium for Strate­gic Col­lab­o­ra­tion and In­no­va­tion”, the con­fer­ence will en­gage top­ics such as the strate­gic di­rec­tion of West In­dies crick­et, the de­vel­op­ment of crick­et, and crick­et and tourism.

Sev­er­al Cari­com lead­ers, in­clud­ing host prime min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Bar­ba­dos prime min­is­ter, Mia Mot­t­ley, and Guyana pres­i­dent, Dr Ir­faan Ali are at­tend­ing the con­fer­ence, as well as crick­et icons such as Sir Wes Hall, Sir Clive Lloyd, Sir Vi­vian Richards, and Sir Char­lie Grif­fith.

CMC