Tony Becca

The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) will be hosting a regional cricket development workshop in Antigua on September 4.

It has offered contracts to seven players and is about to have them signed. It has also reached what it hopes is an understanding with the West Indies Players Association and it has said, through president Ken Gordon, that it hopes to return to a longer season - to home and away matches - for the regional four-day tournament by next year and, as far as West Indies cricket is concerned, that is good news.

If, however, the reason for all that is to get the West Indies team back to where it was or near to where it was up to 11 or 12 years ago, the board needs to do more than that: remembering that you cannot build from the top, they need to go back to the schools and to the clubs.

With all the talk, from almost every quarter, about the abundance of talent in the region, the region's cricket is poor and it is poor from bottom to top.

Uncovering talent

Unless talent is a lovely drive through the covers every now and again or the ability to bowl the ball on a good length every now and again, there is hardly any talent, much more plenty talent, in the region.

Whatever talent is there must be buried and, if that is the case, it needs to be uncovered, taken out and developed - starting in the schools and in the clubs.

Although it may be so, it does not seem to be a case where West Indies cricket boasts many talented youngsters at the bottom, but is weak at the top.

If that is so, then something is wrong with the development process in West Indies cricket - and remembering that everything goes to the Test player and hardly anything to the first-class and that all the emphasis is placed on the Test player - that may well be the case.

It may well be that in our hurry to make it back to the top we are trying to build from the top and have ended up exposing, to their detriment, a number of young players who are not ready for the higher levels of the game.

In other words, they have been forced ripe and the result is that many of them who, if they were allowed to go through the proper channels of development, may have ended up serving West Indies cricket, and probably so with distinction, have been discarded and thrown away.

A look at what's been happening in recent years suggests that West Indies cricket should take its time, should spend more time building from the bottom instead of trying to do the impossible by building from the top, and in doing so it should pay more attention to what goes on below the first-class level and certainly to what goes on below the West Indies level.

Historical performances

A look at our history, for example, shows that 37 years ago, in 1969, Barbados (winners of the Shell Shield the previous year) went on a short tour of England and, playing against strong County teams, won one first-class match and lost one by 11 runs, won three one-day games and lost two.

In the following year, in 1970, Jamaica, winners of the Shell Shield the previous year, also went on a short tour to England and against strong County teams, won one, drew three and never lost a first-class game, while losing the one one-day game they played.

And it should be noted that in those days, West Indians, playing in the West Indies, were not accustomed to the intricacies of the one-day game.

This year, the West Indies 'A' team was in England, and in comparison to the performances of Barbados and Jamaica 37 and 36 years ago, although they played against county teams not at full strength, they were disappointing.

Even in these days, the West Indies 'A' team should be too good for a County team.

This West Indies 'A' team, however, ended up with a record of one victory, five losses, two draws and two no-results in all matches, with only Runako Morton justifying his place on a West Indies 'A' team.

Add to that the poor performance of the West Indies Youth team at the Junior World Cup earlier this year, and it should be obvious that the problem with West Indies cricket is at its foundation.

Young players

The West Indies were so disappointing at the Junior World Cup that in its two-page wrap-up of the event, the ICC's Cricket Quarterly, the official newsletter of the International Cricket Council which talked about teams like Nepal, Namibia, Uganda, Scotland and Ireland and players from those countries, did not once mention the West Indies or the name of a West Indies player.

West Indies cricket needs a lot of things - including contracts for the players and a longer season.

What it needs more than anything else, however, what it needs if it is to return to the top, is a greater interest in the development of its young players, some emphasis in the schools and in the clubs. It will take some time, but it is the obvious way to go.