GROS ISLET, St Lucia, CMC – Legendary fast bowler Joel Garner believes a full developed first class programme will help improve West Indies’ fortunes at international level.
While the Caribbean side have excelled in the Twenty20 format, their plight in the 50-overs and Test format is well known as they lie eighth in both these forms of the game.
And even though the West Indies Cricket Board recently expanded their first class competition, Garner said this may not yet be enough to help return the regional side to the higher echelons of world cricket.
“You will get the results only when you are prepared to put the work in. Yes it’s a young team but the coaches are working to make the fellows more professional,” Garner told the Hindustan Times in a recent interview.
“I don’t think we play enough cricket in a year to be where we want to be. This is the first or the second year when we are playing 10 first-class games in a year. But are 10 first class games enough to produce cricketers? No I don’t think so.”
Garner, currently the West Indies team manager and a WICB director, helped create part of West Indies’ rich legacy in an illustrious career that yielded 259 wickets from just 58 Tests at a mean average of just under 21.
During his time, he formed part of a fearsome pace battery which included the likes of Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding, Andy Roberts and Colin Croft.
However, Garner pointed out that his generation had honed their skills in English County cricket but this was now a missing element of modern West Indies cricket development.
“That is where we became professionals. The workload is different. Everything about County cricket is different,” he explained.
“We played 22 or 24 games in a year, one-day cricket whether that’s 40-over or 50-over, or 55 over. There used to be five intense months of cricket but these days I don’t think anyone plays County cricket.”
Garner, the long-standing president of the Barbados Cricket Association, said a bigger effort needed to be made in ensuring that young cricketers saw the game as beneficial.
Contending that too many good young players were allowed to disappear, the 63-year-old said it was important that administrators helped these players to make a smooth transition from the youth programme.
“We don’t do a good job selling cricket to the youngsters. You will see all the youngsters are competitive up to Under-19 cricket. After that they fall away,” Garner said.
“We have to show them that cricket is a game that you enjoy, a game that builds character, a game that gives you a future. You don’t just look only at the T20 or the glamour attached to it.
“At the end of the day, cricket is still the most popular game you could see anybody play. And I think we need to sell cricket as a profitable profession, as opposed to just a sport.”
