Cricket pundits are divided over the West Indies teams’ performance over the last decade with some saying the performances have been stagnant while others are of the view that the performances have gotten progressively worse.
Cricket West Indies’ Chief Executive Officer, Johnny Grave, said he is no nearer to having a solution for the team’s performances and is of the opinion that there is no simple fix to the problems.
The CEO made his position clear during a recent interview on the Mason and Guest radio programme.
According to the Englishman, “I really don’t think there are simple solutions. I think this team can play better and as they said, they needed to represent the region and perform better in New Zealand and if they had done so the results may have been the same but we certainly would have competed far more equally in the Test match and pushed New Zealand harder…”
Grave added, “You can’t go to anywhere in the world, let alone New Zealand who are tied at the top of the World rankings in Test cricket and drop seven catches and expect to have good performances.”
The CEO said that he is not one who would resort to making changes to one player or one coach but rather an improvement of the entire system.
“We are all bitterly disappointed by what happened in New Zealand and the players and coaching staff are equally disappointed but do I think the solution is changing a coach here or there or changing a player here or there? No I don’t…I don’t think there are simple solutions to our problems, we are trying to transform West Indies cricket from grassroots all the way up to the professional level, we are trying to improve the system,” he stated.
He continued, “We can blame individuals if we want. We can call for a player to be replaced by another if we want, but from what I’m saying from where I sit, we need to improve the entire system. We’ve got to make further changes to professionalize West Indies Cricket and going from that amateur system to a truly world class professional system is going to take an awful lot of investment and time and focus and what I want our cricket department to be focused on is improving the system and not looking to change one person or one coach here or there.”
The CEO admitted that this transformation will not happen overnight while contending that these performances has been the story of West Indies Cricket for nearly a decade. This is reflected in the rankings where the Caribbean unit is condemned to the bottom half of the table for majority of that period.
Nevertheless, Grave informed that Director of Cricket, Jimmy Adams and his team are currently working to improve all areas of the game for the Caribbean side.
“Obviously if we can bring players together in advance of test series and ODIs and T20 series but it is also what happens in between and when players aren’t at international level is equally important and the director of cricket Jimmy Adams and his team are working with those six regional franchises to improve the system there which is all aspects, sports science and medicine coaching, facilities… we’ve got to improve all aspects of our cricket, there is no one aspect we are looking to improve over the others, it’s a comprehensive improvement over every single faucet,” he highlighted.
The CEO disclosed, “We’re making a big investment in coaching. We’ve got forums now where the Director of Cricket will host all the regional head coaches trying to get coordination of our programmes, making sure we know exactly what is happening on the ground in the territories in between tours.”
