PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – West Indies team manager Joel Garner has queried the work ethic of regional players and says the quality of cricket at domestic level was being reflected at the international level in the performances of the West Indies team.
In a candid interview here ahead of today’s start of the final Test against India, the legendary former fast bowler said that key to any West Indies resurgence in world cricket would be the commitment of players to their own development which would require a culture change.
Garner, also a West Indies Cricket Board director, said this area was one that needed to be addressed urgently and was of significantly more importance than a few good results at international level.
“We have challenges and the challenges that we have are great. They are not anything you can fix with a one-off performance or a two-off performance,” said Garner.
“I think most of our challenges come from within the territories where the cricket is being made and what is being done at local level.
“What you see is what we have at regional level and what we put to the international world is what you see at regional level, and I think if we are going to be serious about our cricket there will have to be some changes and some serious moves to deal with the cricket at the developmental stage.”
He added: “We’ve always had promise, we’ve always had promising players, we’ve always had attractive players. The problem that we have is that most of the players who are identified, I don’t think they work hard enough and they fall away.
“If the players are prepared to work as hard as they need to work, they will get to the top of world cricket as well.”
West Indies’ performances have been once again come under microscope, following their 237-run defeat in the third Test against India in St Lucia last week, which gave the tourists an assailable 2-0 lead in the four-Test series.
However, the defeat came on the heels of an encouraging performance in the second Test at Sabina Park in Kingston where the Windies batted the entire final day to pull off a draw.
Garner, also the current Barbados Cricket Association president, contended that while a lack of money to fund development programmes was an issue, administrators were also faced with the challenge of changing a negative culture within West Indies cricket.
“My challenges [in Barbados] are different from the rest of the region. If you look at the budget for cricket in Barbados, the budget is maybe five-and-a-half million [to] six million dollars,” Garner noted.
“If you look at all the other territories which play the cricket, you can look at their budgets and see how much money they spend in their developmental stages.
“My challenges are in that we have systems and everything in place but like everything else, I think it’s a lot of organized cricket [and] I don’t think that players take that little bit extra to do things on their own. I don’t think that everything can be structured or can be done in vacuum.
“It’s a responsibility we have to take where it’s a culture we have to change and a culture we have to grow from within the team, where training is an integral part of whatever we do.”
The 63-year-old Garner played 58 Tests in an outstanding career for West Indies, taking 259 wickets at an average of 20.98.
