Greats tell how to mend cricket

Informal Cricket, the use of modern technology and an intense schools programme should be key ingredients in any recipe geared towards rebuilding West Indies cricket.

These views were expressed at a panel discussion, entitled 100 Years Of West Indies Cricket, held at Solidarity House, Harmony Hall, Thursday night.

The event was organised by the Barbados Workers Union (BWU) as part of a series in honour of former BWU stalwart, the late Sir Frank Walcott.

The panellists were Sir Everton Weekes, Sir Clyde Walcott and the Rev. Wes Hall, all former Test cricket greats. The moderator was former manager of the Barbados cricket team, Charles Alleyne.

As society changed, the environment that influenced and supported informal cricket also changed. That is the problem now with West Indies cricket, Hall told the large audience.

Note decline

Even though we have better organised cricket at the senior level, we do not have that measure of unorganised cricket that we used to have and, as a consequence, we have a decline in quantity and quality in terms of our players.

The problem is that we seem unable to come to grips with the reality that we have slipped somewhat, he said.

Hall, in tracing the history of West Indies cricket from 1901, noted that it was originally an important activity for the plantocracy, and was eventually picked up by the labourers and became very important to them.

Sir Everton Weekes emphasised the importance of cricket at the school level and made a call for the return of set or inter-house competitions.

I also feel that set match cricket should be played in the Grammar schools, said Sir Everton.

We should go back to those days when we had Set A, Set B and Set D and that sort of thing. I think the discipline should start there, he said.

Weekes expressed the view that it would require extra work on the part of teachers for such a system to be successful, but wondered if this were possible considering that so many of them seemed occupied giving additional tuition in academic subjects.

Of course, we would also need some teachers who are prepared to stay back and help these kids in the evening.

As you know, a lot of the teachers now do private work to help the children with examinations and so on, and I suppose they would rather do that than stay around and help the children with sports, he said.

Sir Everton also noted that the abundance of female games teachers was another factor standing in the way of such a development.

I dont think theyd be good cricket teachers, said Sir Everton.

Sir Clyde Walcott, in addressing the issue of developing young cricketers, said coaching could not now be done the way it had been in the past.

He called for the use of modern technology in the effort to reach todays young players, many of whom performed well up to the Under-19 level but failed to progress from there.

In this day and age we cannot expect to have coaching done as it was done 20 and 30 years ago. I think everybody will tell you that to teach people in this day and age you have to use technology, said Sir Clyde.

He noted this was not restricted to sport but applied to many areas of life.

Show them

This is absolutely necessary if you want to improve a young players ability. You can no longer stand up and tell him things, he has to see it for himself, Sir Clyde said.

He added that based on what he had seen, other countries were not superior to the West Indies in terms of talent, but it semed they more readily made use of technology.

The former chairman of the International Cricket Council referred to an incident during the West Indies recent visit to Toronto, Canada, when he went to the West Indies dressing room to introduce himself to some of the new players.

According to Sir Clyde, one of the players did not recognise his name and had never even heard of the three Ws.

Here is a young player, a very promising player, too, and he has never heard of the three Ws. One wonders if he has ever seen the three Ws in action, said Sir Clyde.

Speaking from the floor, Colvin Mascol, a Division 1 cricket umpire, and Basil Matthews ,former secretary of the Barbados Cricket Association, both expressed the view that more attention should be paid to cricket at the school level.

Matthews supported the call for a return to unorganised or informal cricket, but warned that this could not be done if young players continued to be given equipment too sophisticated for their use.

He felt that an effort should be made to develop cricket among the country clubs where the interest was currently high.