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Monday, February 24, 2025

Time is running out on Windies revival—PM

by

Sport Desk
509 days ago
20231003
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley bold­ly pre­dict­ed that if West In­dies fails to “get its act to­geth­er”, teams such as the Unit­ed States will eas­i­ly beat them on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

Row­ley is the cur­rent chair­man of the Cari­com prime min­is­te­r­i­al sub-com­mit­tee on crick­et, which has been man­dat­ed to ex­am­ine all mat­ters re­lat­ed to the de­vel­op­ment of the sport in the Caribbean to bet­ter po­si­tion it so that West In­dies could re­turn to the glo­ri­ous days.

The T&T prime min­is­ter con­ced­ed that a lot of work was need­ed to ar­rest the slide of not on­ly the West In­dies team, but the sport gen­er­al­ly in the Caribbean, and he has em­barked up­on a mis­sion to de­sign a long-term strate­gic plan to ad­dress sev­er­al is­sues.

“If we do not get our act to­geth­er now, we will strug­gle to beat the Unit­ed States be­cause they have now come in­to the game and their or­gan­i­sa­tion­al skills, their re­sources, and man­age­ment of sport, they will leave us be­hind,” he said in a wide-rang­ing ra­dio in­ter­view on I95 FM this past Sat­ur­day in Port-of-Spain.

“You no­tice now that there will be Twen­ty20 World Cup match­es in the Unit­ed States? We do not have much time to get to the root of our prob­lems and try to grasp the net­tle and put down a plan.”

Row­ley said the is­sues im­pact­ing West In­dies crick­et were com­plex, and the sit­u­a­tion need­ed to be han­dled care­ful­ly to get the best out­comes.

“It is a com­pli­ca­tion that re­quires, first and fore­most, to un­der­stand what ex­act­ly is the prob­lem, what is the mine­field you are cross­ing, and how do you cross that mine­field,” he said. “I am work­ing on un­der­stand­ing these three things.

“My ob­jec­tive is work­ing to­wards a de­vel­op­ment plan, and hav­ing spo­ken to some of my prime min­is­te­r­i­al col­leagues that is the ap­proach we want to take. Fly­ing around and blam­ing peo­ple and de­press­ing our­selves about the state of the game is not get­ting any­body any­where.

“We need to get the peo­ple who can help us to put our fin­ger on the pulse of the prob­lem. We need to di­ag­nose the prob­lem – and it is not uni-faceted, it is mul­ti-faceted.”

Row­ley said he hoped to con­vene a meet­ing in Jan­u­ary with sev­er­al stake­hold­ers in­side the sport and oth­ers too, to re­flect on the best way for­ward, so that a for­mi­da­ble strate­gic plan can be de­signed to set West In­dies crick­et on a firm foot­ing.

“The first part is to do a gen­er­al con­sul­ta­tion, and I think I have heard a lot (since tak­ing up the post) and some peo­ple have sub­mit­ted mem­o­ran­dums, so I am mov­ing in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture to host a vir­tu­al meet­ing with a wide cross-sec­tion of peo­ple,” he said.

“I am not just talk­ing about peo­ple who want to pon­tif­i­cate, we want peo­ple who have some­thing that they want to con­tribute to the up­lift­ment of the game to have some­thing to work with be­cause of what I have done so far, there sev­er­al di­ver­gent views. How do you get these di­ver­gent views and dis­till them to get a plan out of it?

“Once there is a plan in place, there will be a role for the gov­ern­ments, and the gov­ern­ments should and could get in­volved in en­sur­ing that the nurs­ery (of the game) is kept alive and that our boys and girls are prop­er­ly re­sourced and trained, and then feed up­wards.”

Row­ley drew ref­er­ence to a boys’ school in the two-is­land re­pub­lic, where crick­et fa­cil­i­ties were left to ru­in, and they were re­cent­ly re­fur­bished be­cause of his in­ter­ven­tion.

“This rep­re­sents what could be the fu­ture for West In­dies crick­et…,” he said. “There were crick­et nets at a boys’ school, a boys’ school, where no crick­et was be­ing played in those nets. The grass was grow­ing and it was taller than me.

“Even­tu­al­ly, they came and re­moved the grass, the fence, and every­thing, and all that’s left there now are the two con­crete pitch­es on the ground where crick­et used to be played in a boys’ school in T&T. That sum­maris­es West In­dies crick­et.”

He said: “If we do not deal with that and where our boys are com­ing up un­der a school­mas­ter and be­ing taught the game… be­cause one of our prob­lems is that some of our peo­ple have reached (in­ter­na­tion­al) crick­et and have not been taught the game.

“You watch the game and you won­der why peo­ple are choos­ing reck­less and some of those ag­gres­sive shots when they are bat­ting – shots that get them out time and time and time again. They have no de­fense. One of the most ba­sic shots in crick­et is a for­ward de­fence, and when you do not have it, you try to hit your way out. When you are in doubt, lash out.” (CMC)


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