Cricket West Indies (CWI) has acknowledged that the game in the region requires urgent attention and has promised to continue the engagement with former cricketing greats and implement suggestions made by them.
This was one of the decisions tabled following a two-day “emergency summit” in Trinidad as part of the fallout from the all-time low “27 all out” at the hands of Australia in Jamaica last month.
It also comes as West Indies are positioned in the lower half of the tables in the International Cricket Council Men’s Tests and One-Day Internationals and mid-table in the T20 Internationals.
Chris Dehring, the Jamaican businessman and marketing guru, who was hired in February as the chief executive of CWI, put it bluntly yesterday when he said: “It definitely is not going to be an easy road”.
The emergency meeting of the Cricket Strategy and Officiating Committee brought together an assembly of regional cricket movers and shakers – Sir Clive Lloyd and Brian Lara; current head coach Daren Sammy, senior players, as well as senior members of the CWI executive including Dehring and Miles Bascombe, the director of cricket. It was chaired by Enoch Lewis, the Cricket Strategy and Officiating Committee Chair.
All except Sammy were present at the head table for an hour-long media briefing at the conclusion yesterday and addressed the audience at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.
“There are certain things that are priority and must be priority,” Dehring said. “We must find the funding to execute and deliver them. Some will require innovation. This was a very good two-day summit including some of the greats of the game, Sir Clive and Brian Lara. It was a very interesting two days . . . we also heard from Roston Chase (Test captain) and Shai Hope (ODIs and T20Is captain). We think we have come away with almost a ‘Christmas wish list’ of all the things we think we need to put in place to get West Indies cricket back where we believe it belongs.”
Dehring added: “The Board is fully behind everything Sir Clive and Brian have recommended. There has never been a question of doubting the intelligence and insights. We want to keep them involved and all their ideas will benefit West Indies cricket.”
This summer West Indies have lost 11 of their 13 matches contested at home – 3-0 in the Tests and 5-0 in the T20Is to Australia; 2-1 in the T20Is to Pakistan. They are 1-1 against the Pakistanis in the ODIs with the final match today at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy in south Trinidad.
Dehring repeated his clarion call of support in the bid to see improved performances, and a revitalised regional pathway from grassroots to the international level for both men and women and in all formats.
“CWI cannot do it alone. We are going to pool all the resources . . . We face an incredible commercial gap, but that gap can only be bridged once we come together and work together. We want to get West Indies cricket back to where it should be and where we want it to be,” he said.
Sir Clive, who is based in the United Kingdom, has spent a lot of time in the region recently as he dedicated his time to the upliftment of the game and the lives of young persons in the region. He arrived in Trinidad ahead of the ongoing series with the hope of meeting with the West Indies players.
“We had very good discussions and I have to say I’m very impressed. I have been to a couple of these such meetings before and all the things that we put forward and I truly hope to see them come to fruition. I was very impressed with the coach, Daren Sammy, and the analyst (Avenesh Seetaram). I thought their presentations were very good . . . they said things that were needed and why they were needed. I hope this doesn’t come to some ‘damp squid’, but it will get some of the things that they have asked for. I look forward to the success in the future,” he said.
Lara also echoed the thoughts of Sir Clive.
“I was pretty happy to be here discussing a sport and an organisation that I spent my entire life with,
as a fan growing up, as a player, and now as a past player. We have to find a new way back to being competitive. I am hoping, as Sir Clive said, that some of the recommendations made by the coaches and the persons involved, even us as former players, will be taken onboard. It’s a long road. It is not something that will happen tomorrow. It was not about the 27 runs . . . if it was 57 or 107 would we be feeling any better? I don’t think so! We have something to address and to be a competitive nation again in world cricket we have to address them and hopefully reap the benefits in years to come.”
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