De­vel­op­ing a ro­bust high-per­for­mance pro­gramme for the re­gion’s emerg­ing tal­ent has been a crit­i­cal area of fo­cus for the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), now Crick­et West In­dies (CWI). This was ev­i­denced by the es­tab­lish­ment of the West In­dies High Per­for­mance Cen­tre (WIH­PC), a crick­et acad­e­my and train­ing cen­tre based at the 3Ws Oval, Cave Hill Cam­pus, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) in Bar­ba­dos. The cen­tre was spon­sored by the Sagi­cor Fi­nan­cial Cor­po­ra­tion and of­fi­cial­ly opened in June 2010.

This tri-par­tite col­lab­o­ra­tion among the WICB, UWI and Sagi­cor led to the es­tab­lish­ment of the Sagi­cor WIH­PC, which has played an in­te­gral role in the de­vel­op­ment of sev­er­al cur­rent West In­dies play­ers, in­clud­ing Test cap­tain and world num­ber one ranked all-rounder Ja­son Hold­er, Kraigg Brath­waite, Jer­maine Black­wood, Ra­jin­dra Chan­dri­ka, Shai Hope, Shane Dowrich, Car­los Brath­waite, Shan­non Gabriel and Shel­don Cot­trell, to name a few.

The Sagi­cor WIH­PC, in its for­mat as a res­i­den­tial high-per­for­mance pro­gramme for co­horts of emerg­ing play­ers, was aban­doned in 2015, fol­low­ing a re­view of its struc­ture and pro­gramme by then di­rec­tor of crick­et Richard Py­bus. The de­ci­sion was tak­en to in­vest in a “sus­tain­able pro­fes­sion­al crick­et sys­tem in the re­gion,” there­by plac­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of de­vel­op­ing tal­ent on the re­spec­tive re­gion­al ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards. Al­though the fran­chise sys­tem has achieved some of the in­tend­ed goals, there are clear chal­lenges, from a high-per­for­mance stand­point, in iden­ti­fy­ing the nec­es­sary hu­man and fi­nan­cial re­sources to im­ple­ment a sus­tain­able per­for­mance-en­hanc­ing pro­gramme for cur­rent and emerg­ing play­ers.

Crick­et West In­dies pro­motes core val­ues and eth­i­cal stan­dards of re­spect, pas­sion, ac­count­abil­i­ty, in­tegri­ty and team ex­cel­lence. These val­ues are con­sid­ered to be es­sen­tial to the con­struc­tion of a high-per­for­mance mod­el. They dri­ve the cul­ture that un­der­scores the de­vel­op­ment of our tal­ent from per­for­mance to podi­um. The con­cept of a “win­ning cul­ture” can on­ly be achieved when there is a sys­tem that nur­tures it.

De­vel­op­ing a high-per­for­mance sys­tem al­lows for the ex­pan­sion of high-per­for­mance pro­grammes to every crick­et play­ing na­tion in the Caribbean. But what is high per­for­mance and do we tru­ly un­der­stand how to build a high per­form­ing sys­tem?

Any sus­tain­able high-per­for­mance sys­tem must be hinged on four key pil­lars:

1) Tech­nique de­vel­op­ment

2) ↓Sci­en­tif­ic and med­ical sup­port

3) World-class coach­ing

4) Ath­lete health and well be­ing

These are the ar­eas that will guide the sys­tem and the pur­suit of ex­cel­lence at all lev­els to see the re­turn of the West In­dies to top rank­ings in world crick­et.

Such a sys­tem pro­vides the nec­es­sary frame­work that can be in­te­grat­ed in­to all high-per­for­mance pro­grammes at the fran­chise lev­el. The sys­tem de­scribed must al­so be ex­pand­ed to the schools—pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and ter­tiary—in or­der to cre­ate an ef­fec­tive ecosys­tem at all lev­els. The sys­tem en­sures sus­tain­abil­i­ty and holis­tic tal­ent de­vel­op­ment, while build­ing sci­en­tif­ic, tech­ni­cal and coach­ing ca­pac­i­ty to an in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard ir­re­spec­tive of an ath­lete’s home is­land.

The de­vel­op­ment of the Coolidge Crick­et Ground (CCG) at the CWI head­quar­ters in An­tigua will re­quire sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial re­sources. Nonethe­less, CWI must move for­ward with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a high-per­for­mance sys­tem that sup­ports tal­ent de­vel­op­ment in re­la­tion to skillset and mind­set and the next cadre of lead­ers across the re­gion.

Aman­da Reifer is head at the Cave Hill Acad­e­my of Sport and can be reached at Aman­da.reifer.reifer@cave­hill.uwi.edu