Over this se­ries of West In­dies crick­et, we have brought you, the read­er, the views of a num­ber of great West In­di­an for­mer play­ers, of­fi­cials, and a cou­ple of per­sons who have de­vot­ed their en­er­gies and the as­pi­ra­tions of their souls to bear on the ques­tion of how our crick­et is to be re­vived. The fo­cus has main­ly been on known tech­ni­cal weak­ness­es, men­tal in­ca­pac­i­ties of the present West In­di­an play­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly our bats­men, and on the very glar­ing fail­ures of suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions to grasp the net­tle of what is need­ed. 

As a point of de­par­ture, the fo­cus in this fea­ture is on a few of the in­tan­gi­bles that are, in many in­stances, as im­por­tant, if not more so, for in­di­vid­ual play­ers and teams to un­der­stand, ap­pre­ci­ate, and seek to in­cor­po­rate as part of their game. 

For that in­sight, we look to the first of the mod­ern gen­er­a­tion (1960s to present) of great West In­di­an fast bowlers, (Sir) Wes­ley Win­field Hall, in his An­swer­ing the Call. But while iden­ti­fy­ing Hall as the “first” of the mod­erns, nuff re­spect to his pre­de­ces­sors, Con­stan­tine, Mar­tin­dale, Her­man Grif­fith, and Fran­cis, who Brad­man wished he had to counter the Body­line Eng­lish at­tack of Lar­wood and Voce.

Wes re­calls that at the height of his pow­ers as an el­e­gant mid­dle-or­der stroke play­er, hav­ing con­sec­u­tive­ly scored 137, 95, 168, 21, 16, and 258 in six in­nings against Aus­tralia and New Zealand, Sey­mour Nurse, who of­ten drew like­ness to the fe­line grace of Frank Mor­timer Maglinne Wor­rell, re­tired from play­ing for the West In­dies; he was said to be a very fit 35 years old.

“He stopped play­ing Test crick­et be­cause the re­mark­able ca­ma­raderie that we had ex­pe­ri­enced over the years was miss­ing and had been re­placed by in­su­lar­i­ty that he did not wish to be part of,” Hall re­ports on a con­ver­sa­tion he had with his great friend, Nurse.

“I did not shed a tear when I knew I had come to the end of my Test ca­reer, but he (Nurse) re­tired in the form of his life,” says big Wes in his lat­est book, An­swer­ing the Call. It’s well known that in­su­lar­i­ty among West In­di­an is­land peo­ple digs deep in­to the sinews of West In­di­an crick­et and weak­ens the team with­in the bound­ary.

 In our fea­ture last week, for­mer WI wick­et­keep­er-bats­man, Jef­fery Du­jon of the Lloyd-Richards era, not­ed to the ef­fect that there was not a lot of great lim­ing amongst the play­ers off the field, but when they got in­side the bound­ary, they were an in­de­struc­tible force. Frank Wor­rell and Clive Lloyd un­der­stood the im­por­tance of play­ers pulling to­geth­er as one.

It was an im­por­tant strength of the cham­pi­on West In­di­an teams of the 1960s and that of those be­tween the late 1970s and the ear­ly 1990s. When uni­ty and the fo­cus on a com­mon pur­pose de­clined, so did vic­to­ries on the field.

“Play­ing for my coun­try (that be­ing the West In­dies) was such a sig­nif­i­cant thing for me,” says Wes. “I have of­ten said that a great dis­ser­vice done to our age is the dis­con­nect be­tween ef­fort and re­ward. Our re­ward was not com­men­su­rate with our ef­fort, but I would have played for noth­ing; I was very hap­py,” says the big fast bowler who bowled for three hours on the last day of the 1963 Test against Eng­land at Lords. As it is pop­u­lar­ly said to­day: “He left it all on the pitch.”

“I want you to keep it tight, Wes,” said his il­lus­tri­ous skip­per, Frank Wor­rell, to his ex­plo­sive fast bowler, hand­ing him the ball for the fi­nal over of the fa­mous tied Test be­tween West In­dies and Aus­tralia in the 1960/61 tour Down Un­der. Aus­tralia need­ed six runs from the fi­nal eight-ball over. WI as­pired to take the last wick­et and the match. Wes said to his cap­tain, who he would do any­thing for, “Keep your eyes on me, skip­per; you will see some­thing spe­cial in this over,” was the re­sponse of the big West In­di­an fast bowler. It is re­port­ed that Wor­rell al­so told Hall (provoca­tive­ly but with a deep un­der­stand­ing of the psy­chol­o­gy in­volved) that if he bowled a no-ball, he would not be al­lowed back in­to Bar­ba­dos. The rest, as it is said, is his­to­ry. 

“When you see me with the ball in my hand, do not doubt me; you are stand­ing be­tween me and the Caribbean peo­ple,” was the warn­ing, more like the threat, Wes had for bats­men. For the bowlers of to­day, it is that not eas­i­ly ac­quired men­tal weapon in the fast bowlers’ ar­moury. 

Glimpses of such an in­tent can be seen in Ke­mar Roach and novice fast bowler Shamar Joseph. As Wes notes in his book, “I have nev­er been sledged. The thing about sledg­ing is that, like every bul­ly, you pick on peo­ple who you think are weak­er than you,” says Wes, and he asks the ques­tion: “So who is go­ing to pick on Gilchrist? Or Grif­fith? Or Hall? They are just serv­ing pun­ish­ment for them­selves.”

And for mod­ern-day fast bowlers, he ad­vis­es it’s not “just a ques­tion of run­ning up and de­liv­er­ing; you have to learn to bowl line and length and then so many vari­a­tions, slow­er ball, and york­er. Once you have mas­tered all those skills, you need to be able to set up bats­men,” says Wes, un­der­lin­ing the im­por­tance of the men­tal game that is crick­et.

Af­ter his play­ing ca­reer, the re­spect for Sir/Rev. Wes­ley Hall grew as he per­formed the roles of tour­ing team man­ag­er, chief of se­lec­tors, chair­man of the West In­dies Crick­et Board, and di­rec­tor of the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Con­fer­ence. In turn, his re­spect and sup­port for his cap­tains, Frank Wor­rell and Garfield Sobers, could not be stronger. As a bowler who may not have al­ways got­ten the field place­ment he want­ed from his cap­tain, the thought of scowl­ing and walk­ing off the field nev­er oc­curred to him.

“As we look to the fu­ture, I main­tain that the re­la­tion­ship be­tween crick­et and the na­tion­al con­scious­ness ... will stand firm in spite of talk about the fad­ing of West In­di­an crick­et cul­ture and the com­pe­ti­tion from oth­er sports,” says Sir Wes Hall.

 David Mowlah-Baksh … Sup­port­er and Ad­vo­cate of W.I. Crick­et—Mara­bel­la, T&T

One thing is cer­tain about West In­dies crick­et: it be­longs to all of us, not on­ly in this gen­er­a­tion, but it is re­al­ly an an­ces­tral gift from those who be­gan play­ing the game se­ri­ous­ly in back streets, open sa­van­nahs, and the vil­lages spread through­out the is­lands and in the in­te­ri­ors of British Guiana many decades ago.

My un­der­stand­ing is that the gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos is cur­rent­ly con­struct­ing a crick­et acad­e­my or in­tends to. It is al­so my un­der­stand­ing that Guyana pro­pos­es to do the same. An­tigua al­ready has the WI crick­et acad­e­my. It’s dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine what’s hap­pen­ing in Ja­maica.

Nev­er­the­less, all acad­e­mies should have elite high-per­for­mance can­di­dates at co­hort lev­els: un­der 13, un­der 15, un­der 17, and un­der 19. Each co­hort lev­el. To­wards the end of their spe­cialised train­ing pro­grammes, they should have com­pet­i­tive match fix­tures against each oth­er.

The end re­sult should be the widen­ing of the re­gion­al pool at each co­hort. Leg­ends should men­tor acad­e­mies. The widen­ing of the pool at the Un­der 19 lev­el should see draft picks drawn in­to the Headley/Weekes Se­ries, which I un­der­stand in­cludes the West In­dies Acad­e­my Un­der 19s.

As re­gards the Un­der 13s/15s/17s, there must be a Re­gion­al Sec­ondary School Cham­pi­on Re­gion­al Cham­pi­on of Cham­pi­ons Tour­na­ment. CARI­COM should take this firm­ly un­der its belt.

The prize for the Re­gion­al Sec­ondary School Cham­pi­on Team should be lu­cra­tive­ly fund­ed by CARI­COM and not less than TT$250,000, with al­so a sig­nif­i­cant purse for the run­ner-up. There should be a CARI­COM pro­vi­so that the prize win­nings must be tan­gi­bly in­vest­ed in­to the Schools Crick­et De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme.

To en­able the spread of this prize-dri­ven fund­ing through­out the re­gion’s cham­pi­on schools, there has to be some kind of un­der­stand­ing ar­rived at that if a school wins the prize af­ter two con­sec­u­tive tour­na­ments, Cari­com holds the right to di­rect the funds to the most im­proved school in year three.

The above Re­gion­al Sec­ondary Schools Tour­na­ment would de­ter­mine the elite can­di­dates for each co­hort lev­el at the var­i­ous acad­e­mies. By some strange stretch, the CPL could be in­vit­ed to mar­ket and host the sec­ondary schools fi­nal.

Adol­phus Hadley—the Lee­ward Is­lands.

“Over­all, there is no struc­ture for the de­vel­op­ment of pas­sion or sci­ence in crick­et. The pas­sion is hard to build as the men’s se­nior team los­es fre­quent­ly and the stars un­der­per­form and don’t daz­zle when they are need­ed. Pure­ly sci­en­tif­ic ap­proach­es take too long to come in­to prac­tice for young crick­eters.

Youth pro­grams are tar­get­ed at on­ly nat­ur­al bat­ting tal­ents, at the ex­pense of bowl­ing, keep­ing, field­ing, fit­ness, and think­ing.

The Sun­day clin­ic mod­el dur­ing the dry sea­son no longer works. It doesn’t al­low chil­dren to get hooked on the game or work on tech­ni­cal pro­fi­cien­cy from a young age.

The dry sea­son is no longer pre­dictable and stan­dard; there­fore, crick­et must be pro­grammed through­out the year; oth­er­wise, it will be too hot or rained out (cli­mate change) when it was tra­di­tion­al­ly played. What is the ef­fect of this? It will be one im­por­tant coach­ing ses­sion few­er, and there are al­ready pre­cious few.

For too long, there has been an “un­coached” ap­proach with ju­nior play­ers while they de­vel­op; this can be good and bad. Good—it al­lows nat­ur­al flair and tal­ent to de­vel­op. Bad—it means that there is no ear­ly at­tempt to fix tech­ni­cal is­sues, so the young play­ers do not de­vel­op good crick­et­ing habits (like run­ning be­tween the wick­ets and sen­si­ble bat­ting). They be­come play­ers that are hard­er to coach when con­sis­tent coach­ing comes in­to the pic­ture.

In­fre­quent crick­et in the Sun­day clin­ic mod­el means that the pas­sion is not turned on. What hap­pens to the young­ster who was ini­tial­ly crick­et crazy, but be­cause of in­fre­quent play, lack of a chal­lenge, lack of guid­ance and ab­sence of some­one to en­cour­age the pas­sion, and a los­ing West In­dies team, his/her zeal fades away?

Crick­et West In­dies needs to find ways to de­vel­op the hype around the teams—es­pe­cial­ly se­nior men, women, the A team, and Un­der 19—by in­clud­ing W.I. he­roes to be em­u­lat­ed. Of course win­ning match­es and se­ries will be most ef­fec­tive in do­ing that, but oth­er mar­ket­ing tools are need­ed. Sell­ing West In­dies mer­chan­dise is an­oth­er way of giv­ing young peo­ple in­spi­ra­tion and as­pi­ra­tion.