PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad – Trinidad & Tobago Prime Minister Keith Rowley boldly predicted that if West Indies fail 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.
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“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 organizational 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 with a view to having something to work with because 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 referenced 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 summarizes 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 defense, and when you do not have it, you try to hit your way out. When you are in doubt, lash out.”
