Tony Becca ON THE BOUNDARY

FORMER WEST Indies captain Clive Lloyd, the distinguished captain of the all-conquering West Indies team of the 1970s into the 1980s, former manager and coach of the West Indies team and now a member of the West Indies Cricket Board, is a man who knows the game of cricket inside out.

Lloyd, also a great batsman and a really brilliant fielder in his day, knows so much about the game that despite his far-from-glowing record as manager and as coach of the team, anyone who is disappointed in the present state of West Indies cricket, anyone who is interested in seeing West Indies cricket rise to its forme should listen to him.

Lloyd, obviously, does not have all the answers but, listening to him from time to time, he knows what is hurting West Indies cricket, he has some if not all of the answers and recently, while speaking to Guyana's Stabroek News, he talked about one of them: the present state of the region's domestic cricket.

road to success

Although Lloyd, the diplomat that he is, did not say that the region's domestic cricket was weak, in talking about the road back to the top, he did say that the road to success lies in developing a better domestic structure.

"If our inter-island cricket is strong, our Test cricket will be strong," said Lloyd, and in saying so, the former hard-hitting left-hander hit the nail cleanly on the head.

Lloyd was right for the simple reason that no building, regardless of how much money is spent in building it, can survive, can be strong, unless it is built from the foundation up and not from the roof down. And cricket, West Indies cricket is no different.

It is impossible to build from the top and regardless of the talent around, regardless of how great the West Indies coach is, regardless of how many clinics and camps are held, the West Indies team will never return to its former glory until West Indies cricket is strong enough so that out of it can come a strong West Indies team.

That is why Lloyd's statement is so correct - at least almost so.

According to Lloyd, the success of the West Indies team lies in a better structure at the domestic level and that, hopefully, means that the future of West Indies cricket depends not only on what happens at the inter-island level, but also on what happened below: at the intra-island level.

For the islands, and Guyana, to be strong enough to put out a strong West Indies team, it means that cricket in the islands also has to be strong and for it to be strong at those levels, it means that the board, through the territorial boards, will have to invest some of its money, however much that may be, at those levels so that the talent can be identified in the schools and then groomed and developed in the clubs before going on to compete at the first-class and then at the Test level.

Right now, cricket around the West Indies and especially so in Jamaica, is so weak that selectors are throwing the dice and hoping; hoping that a young player who has not yet learned the trade properly or fully, who has little if any experience, who has scored one or two centuries or taken a few wickets at club level, is ready to perform at the first-class level.

It is the same thing at the West Indies level where young players, blessed with neither performance nor experience, are thrown in, with a prayer, at the deep end.

a genius

Although selectors should always be on the lookout for a genius, a genius does appear every day. Too often, for example, the West Indies select batsmen who do not even have one first-class season behind them, who have only one century to their names, send them into battle against experienced and successful performers, and expect them to perform.

Test cricket is not the place to learn the trade and neither is it the place to match skills and to perform. The place to learn the trade, to develop one's skills, is first in the schools, then in the clubs; and, in the West Indies, it is finally in first-class cricket for Jamaica, for Barbados, for Trinidad and Tobago, for Guyana, for the Leeward Islands and for the Windward Islands.

When a batsman, for example, gets into the West Indies team, it is time to perform and instead of hoping and praying that he will, he should be, like the Australians, if not to the extent of one like Michael Hussey, expected to perform.

"If our inter-island cricket is strong, our Test cricket will be strong," said Lloyd