Having celebrated its 50th Anniversary this past July 4, 2023, Caricom’s leaders have announced their intention to become more directly involved in West Indies cricket. An announcement that has been received as sweet music to the ears of very many West Indies cricket fans.
On and off the field of play, West Indies cricket has been transformed from its previously held status as a major wellspring of pride for Caribbean peoples within the region as well as in the diaspora. Instead, it has become an incessantly flowing fountainhead of regional embarrassment. The most recent example of which being the visiting India ODI captain Hardik Pandya’s publicly issued complaint about his team not having received the basic necessities during their current ongoing Caribbean tour.
Pandya’s complaint came on the heels of the West Indies loss of both the Test and ODI Series against the Indians, the latter 1-2 by margins that were most embarrassing. And that following the West Indies failure to qualify for the forthcoming India-hosted ICC ODI World Cup for the very first time in the marquee tournament’s forty-eight-year history.
Major encountered issues surrounding team travel from one match-hosting Caribbean country to the next, appear to have been at the root of Sharma’s complaint. If so it would have come as a wake-up call for both Cricket West Indies (CWI) the regional body responsive for the governance of Caribbean cricket, as well as the leaders of its respective members countries. The Caribbean and neighbouring USA are scheduled to jointly host the ICC’s 2024 T20 World Cup next June.
The clock is, therefore, now rapidly ticking down to the 2024 World Cup, an event that will involve twenty of the world’s absolute best cricket teams. And which will be viewed by billions more via globally televised coverage of its fifty-five scheduled matches. Once again the eyes of the entire cricket world and more, given the T20 format’s ever-increasing popularity, will be on the Caribbean. Providing the opportunity for the region to globally display, hopefully, its very best qualities and not the worst.
The last thing CWI any of its designated 2024 T20 World Cup hosting match venues country members, or the leaders of those respective territories would want is for their respective international travel destination reputations to be blemished by embarrassing uncomplimentary reports of encountered issues. Air travel-oriented tourism is of major significance to the economic well being of most Caribbean countries. With twenty teams, their respective accompanying staff, likely hundreds of thousands of visiting fan supporters, as well as the associated tv crews and even more importantly international media all requiring to moved flawlessly from one match-hosting venue to the next, it will be a monumental test of Caribbean regional capabilities.
Admittedly, it will not be the very first time the Caribbean will be facing such a challenge. The region has already successfully hosted several ICC World Cups. The 2007 ODI and 2022 U19 World Cups having been, respectively, the most prominent and recent.
Since then, however, as a direct after-effect of the COVID19 pandemic, regional airline travel has become even more problematic than ever before. So much so that CWI has been struggling of late to move teams around the region, for both its own domestic tournaments as well as for visits by international squads. Reports of players arriving on schedule, but their gear bags being delayed for several hours, even as long as a day, have become far too common.
Even beyond the requirements of moving multi-personnel teams and their players equipment around, basic travel within the Caribbean, especially to and from the smaller islands has become, post COVID, a major challenge. Too many people wanting to travel, against the backdrop of insufficient availability of airline seats, has created an ongoing headache for all concerned.
It is a headline issue that should, therefore, garner the attention of Caricom’s Cricket Sub-Committee (CCSC) and CWI when those two bodies meet in the coming weeks as scheduled. Administrative officials of the Caribbean Premier League ( CPL) should deservedly, also be invited to attend that meeting.
Founded in 2013, CPL will be celebrating it’s 10th Anniversary this year. Consisting of 6 participating teams, the CPL has staged its now preceding nine tournaments almost flawlessly. Over the past ten years there have been very few if any reports of issues encountered by the CPL in its movement of teams, gear bags, associated staff, tv crews and equipment to and from its match-hosting venues. The CPL’s near flawless execution of its own tournament travel related requirements can, therefore, serve as an example for CWI to follow and for CCSC to recommend as a model worthy of 2024 T20 World Cup adoption.
While regional travel as its relates to next year’s World Cup should rightfully be at the forefront of the forthcoming CWI – CCSC meeting, it will not be the only item on the agenda for discussion. Just as importantly, arguably even more so, will be the need for CWI to begin the process of implementing meaningful measures that can the stop the continuing downhill slide of the West Indies cricket team’s reputation as a competitive force in international cricket. A slide that has now become so precipitous as to have warranted suggestions from noted former international players that the West Indies team should either be relegated to a second tier of ICC tournaments participation, or even worse disbanded altogether to allow its respective member-territories to compete on their own as individual countries. West Indies cricket now, therefore, faces a crisis that threatens its very identity and which needs to be addressed immediately through the identification and implementation of viable solutions.
Among the viable solutions likely to be advanced and discussed at the CWI – CCSC meeting, will be the former’s governance structure. Several previously issued Reports, penned by some of the Caribbean region’s most brilliant minds, have recommended a restructuring of CWI’s governance structure as a fundamental requirement for the removal of the bureaucratic barriers which have been hampering the implementation of measures which can meaningfully impact the further development of West Indies cricket. To date, most of those Reports have been ignored by CWI. Despite the inherent, often very often obvious, wisdom of their provided recommendations.
CWI’s recently elected President Dr. Kishore Shallow has, however, publicly indicated his administration’s intentions to revisit some if not all of the published Reports, with the view towards adopting the provided recommendations. Whether he will receive the full support of the representatives of CWI’s six member territories: Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Leewards, Windwards and Trinidad & Tobago in his stated intention to do so, however, remains to be seen.
Aside from travel and governance, the CWI-CCSC meeting should also be seeking to address the overall issue of the continuing decline of interest in and involvement with cricket among Caribbean school-aged children. Identifying initiatives for immediate adoption that can rekindle such interest has become a key factor for the further development of West Indies cricket.
The more school-aged children there are interested in and actively involved with cricket, the wider the player pool will be at the grassroots level. The broader the base of the developmental pyramid, the greater will be the numbers who will successfully progress upwards through the system to eventually play representative cricket for their respective countries, and ultimately the West Indies.
One of the measures that CWI should be suggesting to the CCSC for Caricom member countries implementation is for West Indies cricket history to become a part of the educational school’s curriculum. Books written on West Indies cricket and its most illustrious and internationally famous players should become a part of the official literature provided to students at Primary and Secondary schools throughout the region.
Much to discuss when CWI and CCSC eventually meet and many reasons for the latter to now become far more directly involved in West Indies cricket!