SKNVibes.com Sports: WICB calls for all associations to take “active” role in development

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Date Posted: Sunday 07 September, 2008

WICB calls for all associations to take “active” role in development

By Ryan Haas
Reporter-SKNVibes.com

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts-THE Chief Executive Officer of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), Dr. Donald Peters, made a call this week for territorial cricket associations to “take an active part in the development of West Indies cricket” throughout the coming years.

With West Indies Cricket at an all time low on the international stage, Peters outlined several programmes that the board has decided would boost the overall development of the Windies.

“All the stakeholders need to be involved in West Indies cricket if the game is to move forward,” Peters said, adding that there would need to be a greater focus on player development over the next year, especially in teams just below the senior level.

“The overall plan is for the WICB to harness a group of 80 top players so that these players form the nucleus from which West Indies players will be selected. They will be retained as professional players so that anyone of them at any stage could be selected and could fit into the team comfortably.”

At the highest level of the game, the WICB is expected to reassess and develop criteria for its players’ betterment in areas such as “salaries, match fees, performance related incentives, international ranking, statistical averages and fitness”.

In speaking to SKNVibes, local cricket organizer Vernon Springer agreed with Peters that there must be a change in the territorial structure of the game if the West Indies is to meet its goal of once again being at the top of world cricket by 2012.

“What I would want to see is for all of us to sit down now, especially in Leeward Islands cricket, and honestly take time to think about where we are going. There cannot be a gap between the clubs and the association, or between the clubs and some of the territorial boards in the Leeward Islands,” Springer noted following the quarterfinal round of the NAGICO Leeward Islands One Day International Tournament.

For Springer, the best way for West Indies cricket to move forward is for the clubs in the territorial associations to take a more serious part in player development, even in the under 13 tournaments.

“If you’re not going to be a part of the grassroots structure, sending teams to all of the tournaments from 13 and under to the senior level, then I don’t think you should be a part of the Leeward Islands structure,” he said in reference to less participatory associations such as the U.S. Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands and Anguilla.

He also touched on the windfall effects of the current economic crunch throughout the world and how sport in general needed to become more streamlined to survive these trying times.

“Gone are the days when we could just take people [to competitions] because we want to take people. We really have to do our research and ask, ‘why am I taking this person to this or that tournament?’ ’ Is it because that person is going to develop substantially in the next two or three years? There has to be a target.”

Whether or not the focus on world class player development at all levels of West Indies cricket will pay off toward the WICB’s lofty goals remains to be seen, but Peters said that the board would certainly be “consulting with Cricket Australia, Cricket South Africa and the England and Wales Cricket Board” as references to the future player development structure of the Windies.

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