'WIPA as detrimental to our cricket as WICB'
In the first part of a hard-hitting interview with Colin Croft for the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian , former West Indies wicketkeeper Deryck Murray blames the administration of the game by businessmen, who "cannot run cricket any more than can
Nitin Sundar
25-Feb-2013
In the first part of a hard-hitting interview with Colin Croft for the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, former West Indies wicketkeeper Deryck Murray blames the administration of the game by businessmen, who "cannot run cricket any more than can they run NASA’s space programmes", for the current state of cricket in the Caribbean.
"Everything that happened later had its origins 10 years previously; mid-1980s. As each successful player of that era left, we kept saying, 'Australia has an academy; England is doing this; South Africa, when it comes back in, plans doing that, with their development.’ We went blithely along, with these businessmen supposedly running cricket, based on the philosophy that West Indies had such talent that we will continue to win. All that they had to do was wait, be around, to get the glory. We all saw the signs and asked: ‘What are we doing to develop our cricket? It is going backwards.’ Not many of our administrators have changed since then. Numerous presidents and CEOs are symptoms of not being able to make any changes. There is this core of administrators, not just at West Indies Cricket Board level but in territorial boards, who are just there just in case WI cricket suddenly turns that corner. They have no vision, no idea what needs to be done, to get West Indies back on track."
Nitin Sundar is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo