West Indies cricket identifies hundred things to improve following meeting with legends

St. John's (Antigua), Aug 12 (PTI) Cricket West Indies (CWI) have "identified about a hundred things" that need improvement, including inculcating a sense of pride among young players, raising the standard of domestic tournaments, and bringing in more money, said the board after after an emergency meeting with the island's past players.

The two-day meeting in Trinidad, which was held for the betterment of the sport in the region, comprised legends such as Viv Richards, Brian Lara, Clive Lloyd, Desmond Haynes, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and current head coach Daren Sammy.

"We have identified a list of about a hundred things that we have to improve, but probably among the top five: facilities at every level for our cricketers; practice pitches across the region; the quality of our domestic tournaments.

"There's definitely a skills deficiency at various levels that don't get highlighted till they reach international levels and then you see the glaring deficiencies vis-a-vis our international counterparts, which again is systemic," Chris Dehring, the CWI chief executive, was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.

Those who have attended the meeting believed that the West Indies are currently "not on the same level playing field as other cricketing nations" before coming up with a roadmap to revitalise the region's cricket.

At the same time, they agreed that that "it's a long road, it's not going to happen overnight." "As the batting coach (Jimmy Adams) pointed out, it's very difficult to change habits when you are getting somebody who has made so many runs at regional level but clearly has deficiencies when it comes to international level.

"It's very difficult to change in a couple of weeks. There are issues concerning strength and conditioning, which again points back to facilities which are available to youngsters and emerging players and 'A' teams, etc," Dehring was quoted as saying.

He said that, among other things, CWI also planned to have "a proper high-performance centre established in the region, a prototype that will then be modelled and imitated across the region, in other countries, (and) academy systems to ensure that the West Indies way of playing cricket is both documented and taught from very early." The meeting comes close on the heels of the West Indies getting bowled out for 27, the second-lowest innings score in Test history and the lowest since 1955, against Australia at Sabina Park in Kingston recently.

"It's been that case for years, where we are not in the same level-playing field as other playing countries," Lara said after the meeting.

"Back in the days when skill was the prominent factor, we excelled, we were the best team in the world. But the game has evolved, and technology and analytics, and we now have to see a new way of finding ourselves back to being very competitive.

"I said not a level-playing field because a lot of the countries are far ahead in these sorts of areas. The skill factor of the game is still there, but not as prominent as it was in the past." PTI AH AH AT AT