High Performance Manager (HPM) of the West Indies Under-19s provisional squad, Graeme West, says they are pushing ahead with the preparation of the side adding that he is satisfied with the innovative methods used in the peculiar situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
West, in an exclusive interview with this publication, said that the current squad comprises 44 boys from around the region who are part of the “provisional squad” for the Under-19 World Cup to be hosted in the Caribbean next year.
However, he pointed out that selection in this provisional squad does not guarantee the players anything and does not restrict other players from outside pushing for places on the World Cup team.
“Despite all the challenges, we’ve got 44 boys currently working on skills programme that Floyd Reifer would have drawn up on his appointment as head coach for the programme,” West stated.
“Alongside that, the players are following physical programmes. We have a lead strength and conditioning coach that oversees all of that.
“We also have every Sunday evening the players attending remotely, personal development programmes that cover things like mental skills, sports nutrition and anti-corruption,” he added.
In addition to those activities, on Sundays there would also be special guests who engage the group in question and answer segments. One of those guests has been West Indies’ limited-overs captain, Kieron Pollard.
“Despite all the challenges we’ve got a lot going on, probably, in some respects, more than we would have done in previous campaigns. Just recognizing that there is a need for things to be done locally, rather than rely on players coming into the High Performance Center during school holidays,” West said.
He rationalized that it would be difficult to assess the players convincingly as of now due to them not being able to train collectively as yet but from all indications based on what was done, West said that he is impressed with the mechanisms in place.
“Just to be able to gauge the level of form, from a high performance perspective, I am delighted that we managed to get coaching programmes in all of the territories where the players that were identified through the provisional pool, those coaches are reporting into the head coach.
“There’s S&Cs working with those players when they’re creating video libraries. Obviously the footage that can come back is really important in this period where we don’t really get to see a lot of the players and the addition is that the personal development programme that we’re running is significantly more substantial than anything that we have run in the past. At this stage of the build up to a World Cup, we usually spend a lot of time in the camps, developing these areas but to do it so early in the programme and with a bigger number,” he said.
He added, “I’m really pleased with that sort of innovation because we’ve done it in the past but just in terms of the quality that we’ve been able to provide. I’ve sat in on those sessions, we’ve got some excellent individual support in that programme and the team has its own sports psychologist. We’ve built on the sports nutrition workshops that we’ve done in the past. So we’ve had, we’ve had lots to draw on from certainly the last five years I’ve been involved in this to improve and to take it forward. So I think it’s a more all-round programme at this stage than we’ve been able to do in the past.”
The former head coach, who was with the squad that lifted the World Cup title in 2016, was cognizant of the void created by the absence of competitive cricket with the pandemic forcing school cricket and club cricket to a virtual standstill.
However, he was hopeful that in the next few months, territories could begin running off events to have them play in trial matches and best versus best games.
“We’re hoping in the next couple of months that the territories are going to run, just as they are in Trinidad at the moment, some games for the boys to play in, call them trial games, call them best versus the best games. Trinidad currently have zonal tournaments, which then will at the end of it have a best of the best game, and all those games are being streamed so our coaches, our selectors can keep an eye on those games, just so there’s something to observe, something to assess because obviously 44 is a big group where we can’t move around the Caribbean as we would have done before to look at them to observe that we haven’t come up with some alternatives which is a good challenge, and may well be certainly, also what we’d look to do in the future because you know some of this has been really great stuff. We’d like to build on it,” West reasoned.
West indicated that Plan ‘A’ is to have a regional under-19 tournament as soon as school exams finish but admitted it looks challenging with that possibility being much later in the year than previous times. This in addition to South Africa under-19’s tour of the Caribbean.
