By Dr Rudi Webster
Recently, Dwayne Bravo described the West Indies team in Dubai as a lost group. Bravo said, “I was there in Dubai and basically the players were lost, the management was lost, everything just looked like we were school kids again, and the team meetings had no sort of positive inputs or anything like that.”
Bravo claimed that the untimely sacking of coach Phil Simmons, who had the full support of the team, disturbed the entire momentum (motivation) of the squad. Surprise, surprise! The team in Dubai cannot be coached from an office in the Caribbean.
The West Indies team seems to be in a state of confusion. It is executing the basic skills poorly and has experienced a breakdown in leadership, teamwork, self-worth, self-discipline, and self-motivation. This is serious stuff because these ingredients form the platform on which good performance is built. In professional sport one can never overestimate the importance of self-discipline and self-motivation. The level of a player’s performance depends largely on the depth of his motivation and self-discipline. In fact, experts in performance now claim that at the highest levels of sport the correlation between self-discipline/motivation and performance is twice as large as the correlation between ability and performance.
The Pygmalion principle is something that president Dave Cameron and other leaders in the West Indies Cricket Board should try to understand. When a leader shares his vision and expectations with team members, communicates freely with them, clarifies their roles and responsibilities, and empowers them to feel like worthwhile and valuable people, he creates an awareness of purpose, a feeling of importance and a sense of belonging. Team members then bring passion and commitment with them especially when they believe that they can truly make a difference to the performance of the team. And when the leader correctly directs and focuses those energies, he satisfies a major requirement for success. Unfortunately, Cameron and his leadership team have done an awful job in these vital areas and cannot in any way be proud of their performance.
In war, no one has as yet found how to administer or manage people into battle. They must be motivated to fight. The same is true in sport. In cricket, the battle is fought with balls and bats but it is the spirit and motivation of the man who leads and the players who follow that take the team to victory. The greatest leader in the world will never win a campaign unless he understands and motivates the people he has to lead. I am not sure that the director of cricket understands the culture and the psyche of the Caribbean people. And he does not seem to know how to motivate and empower his coaches and players. This I believe is a cause of his erratic behaviour and mediocre performance. The sacking of Simmons is a case in point.
The Board claimed that one of the reasons for the sacking of the coach was a difference in culture between the director/WICB and Simmons. But the board’s culture is a losing culture that needs to be challenged and changed. The board cannot continue to support and propagate that culture and expect the fortunes of WI cricket to change.
WI players must take full responsibility for their performance on and off the field but they will not be able to give their best if they continue to operate in the hostile and toxic environment that currently exists.
This begs the question, for whose convenience and benefit is West Indies cricket designed? Is it designed to serve the players and coaches, or is it structured to satisfy the needs of the president, board members and the director of cricket in order to perpetuate their power to control and dictate? Democratic boards are designed to serve, support and empower rather than to direct, control and dictate. As long as Cameron is in charge, the board will stick to its rigid ways and continue to resist change. It will work in a non-learning environment that stifles growth, innovation, development and good performance.
Teamwork and team spirit seem to be at an all time low. But what type of teamwork is needed to improve the fortunes of WI cricket?
In American football, the head coach is the king. He has great power and usually calls the shots. His counterpart in WI cricket is the director of cricket. The main priority of the team is the implementation of the coach’s plan. Conformity is the name of the game and dissent and individuality are not encouraged or tolerated. Leadership and coaching have an inflexible and autocratic flavour.
In cricket, performance is built around the individual, so there is more emphasis on individual effort, style, motivation, and achievement. Motivation of the individual and management of his assets and weaknesses are top priorities. Having one rule for all can be counterproductive. Good presidents and cricket directors are smart enough to tolerate and accommodate internal differences and individual needs while focusing on the common goal. They value diversity and interdependence.
Teams run into trouble when the team plays one game and the administrators play a different game. For example, when a cricket director manages his team like an American football coach most things revolve around him and his plan rather than around his coaches and players. His need for control and conformity and his dislike of any kind of dissent invariably stifle individual talent and creativity and interfere with team dynamics and performance.
It is not too late for the director of cricket to change his ways. But will he be allowed to do so? He must stop behaving like an American football coach and start to play the same game that his team is playing, the game of cricket.
