By Tony McWatt – Publisher
As it enters the 2022 New Year, the Ricky Skerritt–led Cricket West Indies (CWI) should be seeking to have a much improved year from the annus horribilis that it’s 2021 can now only be best described. Towards that end here are my top 10 suggestions for resolutions CWI, as well as its Regional Member Boards should be seeking to fulfill in 2022.
- Request of all Caribbean Governments that they should mandate the addition of West Indies cricket history to the curriculum of all Primary and Secondary schools within the Region for the September 2022 School year commencement.
- Similarly request that Caribbean country Governments must mandate the addition of a paid cricket coach to the staffing component of each Secondary school within the Region.
- Regional CWI Member Cricket Boards must organize Primary and Secondary schools cricket competitions at the U11, U13, U15, U17 and U19 levels
- Regional CWI Member Boards must mandate that their participating League teams must include at least two U23 players, one bowler and batsman each.
- Cricket West Indies ( CWI) must organize a Region wide prize competition for the development of an attractive promotional poster which charts the development pathway from U11 cricket through to representing West Indies in Test, ODI and T20 cricket. Brian Lara, Jason Holder and Chris Gayle photos should be included as examples of how lucrative potential West Indies cricket careers can be. The winning poster should be placed in all Primary and Secondary schools throughout the Region.
- CWI must also revert to its previous practice of hosting designated schoolchildren stands at Caribbean hosted international cricket matches. At least 1000 schoolchildren, from different schools showed be allowed free entry to all international cricket matches played in the Caribbean.
- CWI must reconvene its annual Super50 tournament as a 10 team competition including representative teams from Canada and the USA.
- CWI must establish it’s own annual 10 T20 tournament in an identical format and the same participating teams as the Super50.
- CWI must establish a two year plan for participation in the forthcoming ICC T20 World Cups. The West Indies team’s 2022 T20 World Cup objective should be to first qualify then to progress beyond the Super6 into the semi/finals. The team’s objective for the 2024 Caribbean hosted tournament should be to emerge as champions! CWI should establish similar team objectives for the 2923 and 2027 ICC 50 Over World Cups. It should bid to host the 2027 tournament and aim for the team to be champions. Finally CWI should develop a six year plan for West Indies to become Test Cricket champions by 2028, the 100 anniversary of the West Indies entry into Test cricket.
- All cricket development plans, procedures and practices such as the aforementioned tri-formats World Cup goals, should be the work of a reconstituted 9 member Cricket Committee. The Committee’s membership should be comprised of one former player representative for each of the six Regional Boards, the CWI Development Manager, the Selections Panel Chair as well as its own appointed Chairperson. The Committee must have an established schedule of meetings and it’s decisions should be reflected in selected West Indies teams!
If it does indeed implement some if not all of the aforementioned suggestions, my bet would be that come this time next year any analyisis of CWI’s past 12 months would then considerably more favorable than it has been for 2021. Here’s to a Happy, Prosperous And COVID Safe New Year For Us All. Cheers!