Dear Editor,
The West Indies does not need a foreign coach. It has not worked and it will never work. Since 1995, the year West Indies lost the Frank Worrell Trophy to Australia, we have never been able to retain that standard of play that we enjoyed under Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards. The main cause of this problem is that all West Indies Test players were forced by the WICB to return to the West Indies and play in the local cricket matches arranged by the WICB to be considered for selection in Test matches. This started with Desmond Haynes not being considered for the Australian tour of 1995 and has continued ever since. Gradually, all upcoming West Indies players have not been playing league and county cricket in England as they had been doing since the 1930s, starting with Learie Constantine and George Headley.
My suggestion is that once you discover a talented player who shows a lot of promise, take the next step and get him a contract in league or county cricket in England. The discipline and responsibility learned in England cannot be replaced by coaching in the West Indies. When West Indies dominated Test cricket and did not lose a Test series for fifteen years, every cricketer on the team had a background of league or county cricket. Three West Indies cricketers have been appointed captains of county cricket teams in England – Roy Marshall (Barbados), Garry Sobers (Barbados) and Clive Lloyd (Guyana). Sir Frank Worrell said it best in his book Cricket Punch published in 1960, “On the contrary nothing is better for a young cricketer from the tropics than to have experience in the leagues, for it is in league cricket that you come up against so many different varieties of bowling from the ones you are used to in our home country; you meet swerve, spin,varying pace – the lot. Furthermore, it gives the cricketer from the tropics invaluable experience of English weather and English wickets. It also gives a young player a sense of responsibility, and a strong sense of responsibility is essential for any good international cricketer. Need I say more?”
Frank Worrell won the batting average for both teams: on his First Test match series in the West Indies in 1948 (147.00) and in his last Test match series in the West Indies in 1962 (83.00) – 14 years apart.
Yours faithfully,
Clifford K Jones