PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC
VANEISA BAKSH, a Trinidad & Tobago-based cricket historian and freelance writer, has thrown her support behind embattled West Indies cricket captain Brian Lara.
Baksh acknowledges that a team 'whitewashed' as the West Indies were in the recent four-Test series against England should expect its leaders would be under pressure to resign, but believes Lara is not to blame for West Indies' continuing woes in the international game.
"These are not ordinary times," Baksh wrote in an article that appeared on the Wisden-Cricinfo website.
"This extraordinary West Indies team has not yet acquired the level of maturity, experience or competence for it to be assessed by the usual benchmarks.
"These youngsters are fledglings in every aspect: outlook, savvy and mental discipline. Unless that is factored into planning, the results will continue to traumatise.
"The talent is there to behold in brilliant bursts, but it remains raw and unharnessed because there is no programme to refine it."
Baksh reasons one of huge problems facing West Indies cricket is that development as a concept does not occupy any specially privileged position in the cricket hierarchy of the West Indies.
"So little attention is given to the need for a comprehensive and coherent plan to rebuild West Indies cricket that when the disappointments come, it is easier to point fingers at individuals than to critique a system," she insists.
Baksh has called on Lara's critics to look at the big picture and to take a look below the surface at the strength of the development programmes in countries like England that have won so handsomely over West Indies recent times.
"An English player coming out of his training programme is at an entirely different level from a West Indian - it took time, but there was a nurturing environment, and coach and captain were consulted before taking decisions," she outlined.
FLASHY LIFESTYLES
"West Indies cricket does not operate within a nurturing framework, unless you consider providing access to flashy lifestyles as nurturing. Young boys are uprooted and thrust into alien lives without any guides.
"It is no wonder that the youngsters dazzle until their first pay cheques, and then they seem to trip off somewhere before they come back down to earth. What is there to prepare them? Obviously they need more time than imagined for them to grow."
Baksh concludes that to blame Lara alone for the dismal performances is to perpetuate the problem.
"For too long we have let West Indies cricket be a one-man show, and it is time we recognise that cricket is a team game requiring support from many levels," she stated.
"Team members are not just the cricketers on the field, it is the management as well; a concept alien to them.
"Maybe Lara captains a team that has lost games, but I don't think this is a losing team. Whether it becomes a winning unit depends on how much we are prepared to invest in building it."
