A glimmer of hope

At last a few snippets of encouraging news for West Indies cricket to counter, at least partially, the ever-present gloom and doom.

The Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) has given an overdue indication that the Sir Everton Weekes Centre of Excellence at the Kensington Oval, opened by the great man himself on June 20, is finally ready for business. Vasbert Drakes and Emmerson Trotman have been named as the coaches, under director of coaching Hendy Springer. It still has to choose the players for its first intake and decide on the curriculum and how it will be structured. But at least there are signs of life.

Just across the water, the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board (TTCB) opened its Academy at its National Centre in Couva on Friday.

Seventeen players have been selected to attend the first session over nine weekends. Kelvin Williams, the power-hitting allrounder of the 1980s, is the head coach with two Trinidad and Tobago players from different eras, Imran Jan (29) and Clem Hercules (60), as his assistants.

According to the TTCB, Desmond Haynes and Andy Roberts are to be involved as well along with West Indies head coach John Dyson and the internationally recognised fielding coach, Julian Fountain. This is a modest beginning but it is a start. As William Wallace, the programme director put it, the aim is "to walk with a group of players to the next level".

Apart from the cricket itself, the course would deal with the usual associated issues such as the laws, diet, mental preparation, public speaking and media relations.

While such facilities are long established and scattered all over every major cricketing country, they have been glaringly missing in the Caribbean and West Indies cricket has suffered because of it.

It was hoped that the WICB's Shell Academy at St George's University in Grenada, set up with great expectations in 2001, would fit the bill with its intensive three-month programme for emerging players from throughout the region.

Like so much else in this part of the world, it collapsed after three years, ostensibly for lack of a sponsor, after Shell withdrew. Like so much else in this part of the world, there has been plenty of talk about replacing it but little action.

Sir Hilary Beckles, principal of the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies, announced three months back that the WICB, of which he is a director, had decided to place its main academy at Cave Hill with its splendid Three Ws Oval, its indoor facility and its accommodation and classroom capacity.

Deryck Murray, the wicketkeeper of the great team under Clive Lloyd, now TTCB president and WICB director, spoke of a nine-month programme for the central academy that would be a "finishing school for Test cricketers".

It is still eagerly awaited.

The WICB's stated aim is to complement such a central venue with feeders throughout its individual member territories that would send their best students on. Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago have moved on their own but there has been nothing further on the rest. At the risk of spoiling a good story, a couple of inhibiting factors should be mentioned. Not surprisingly, both involve finance.

The WICB are now caught in the middle of the dispute between Digicel and the Stanford 20/20 organisation over the 20/20 for US$20 million match between the Stanford Superstars and England that went to the London International Court of Arbitration (LICA) on Friday for settlement.

The costs, in lawyers' bills and LICA fees, are already exorbitant and are bound to put a huge dent in the WICB's finances, even the potential to bankrupt it. In that case, the central academy, and other expensive plans, would clearly need to be downsized or scrapped altogether. In Barbados, sporting organisations, the BCA prominent among them, are now having to adjust their plans after the government's recent budget placed a steep tax increase on the lottery that had contributed substantially to their finances. The BCA estimated the new tax structure would reduce its annual payment from the lottery by BDS $1.6 million. The Centre of Excellence might just have to be trimmed.

Coinciding with the euphoria throughout the Caribbean over the success of the Jamaican and Trinidad and Tobago athletes at the Beijing Olympics, such a financial blow for sport was unfortunate timing. The government reportedly favours dealing with each application for financial assistance on merit. Although such a system operates in other Caribbean countries it is not a guaranteed source, as was the lottery.

For the moment, it is heartening that two traditionally strong territorial boards have taken the lead in at last paying attention to the proper development of West Indies players of the near future.