Letters to the editor
Newsday
Editor: So what’s new? Cricket “selectors” in rum shops have been saying the same thing for years. Cricket West Indies and by extension the regional boards are only there for the salary, free travel and hotel accommodation.
They certainly don’t have the slightest idea how to improve cricket in the region. Do we have the right training programs for future talent? Do we have the right analysts? Do we have proper diet plans and fitness programs?
We play cricket in the West Indies because we love the sport. If one proves to be better than the rest, then he gravitates to a local club that can pay him to play. If no one pays him, he acts as a mercenary and plays for small change in the minor leagues, which currently pay more than the regional cricket boards.
Playing cricket at the highest level is a full-time job, just like football is, and we know where that has gone at TT. Only truly disciplined players with an 8-4 job can do what it takes to reach any level in cricket.
Most top players are not academically inclined and as such depend on a structure that would see them paid full time. If that doesn’t happen, it’s a party game for all these players.
Before the last TTCB election, the outgoing president asked for another three-year term to implement changes that would improve cricket in the TT, but he has been there for ten years and nothing has been done. How can he do something in three?
We need change and clubs that support the stupidity that happens in board elections – and maybe the same thing happens in other countries in the region – need to change their mentality.
Cricket is a business and these boards do not have businessmen or any person with business acumen as advisers. If they do, they may be politicians and we all know their purpose in life.
The one entity that could have brought money into the region to help improve our cricket was sold. Everything in the West Indies has to be run as politics in the region and it will continue if we let it. Those at the top are only interested in their own well-being.
We need change now because while we wait for change, all the recommendations made will remain exactly that and we will continue to send match players to represent us, with the end results being whiteouts, whiteouts and injuries.
LARRY SOOKLALSINGH
by e-mail
