Sobers

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, (CMC):

WEST INDIES legend Sir Garfield Sobers says captain Brian Lara is not the reason behind the team's recent troubles, and has pointed to several administrative issues which he argues have affected the team's performance.

Sir Garry, who has worked with the West Indies squad in recent years as a technical consultant, noted that in assessing Lara and the team, facts must be brought to the table.

"As far as the West Indies team is concerned, Brian Lara as a captain and all the comments that have been made sometimes people don't look at the facts. And the facts are that the West Indies in the last 2 ¹/² years and even before that, have had a tremendous amount of problems," Sir Garry pointed out.

Problems

"And problems which if you are preparing for a World Cup like this you can't afford to have. One, the West Indies Board didn't have enough money to have enough camps. Two, there were always problems with not being able to field a strong West Indies team, there were strikes and there were all kinds of problems.

"And to build a house, if you don't have a solid foundation and you build a house, you are going to have problems later on. And I think this is where the problems are stemming from. People don't seem to realise this and there are all kinds of calls for this and calls for that, which I think is being over done by lots of people."

Sir Garry, considered the finest player in the game's history, called for a proper examination of why the team was performing below par.

"I think that we first have to sit down, think why are our players not playing well, why is the team in this kind of turmoil and examine it properly," Sir Garry urged.

"And whenever you finish, you will come back to the fact that the foundation was not laid properly for the team to build on.

"And with all the controversial troubles that we have had in the past, there could not be a proper foundation to build a team for this World Cup against teams such as Australia, Sri Lanka, South Africa and other teams.

"If you look around and you look at it in a realistic situation, India had problems and they are gone. Pakistan had problems and they are gone. We had a lot of problems.

"Australia haven't had the same problems. England have problems and they are struggling. Sri Lanka and those other countries haven't had the same kind of problems and they are the teams that are in the forefront. You must have a proper foundation to build a team and I don't think that we've had that foundation in the first instance."