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When the Champions Trophy tournament begins in Pakistan today, West Indies will not be among the eight competing teams. But Cricket West Indies’ director of cricket Miles Bascombe has had precious little to say on that score.
With little fanfare, the former West Indies captain Daren Sammy has risen to the very top of the coaching pile, recently supplanting head coach Andre Coley. Now, as all-formats head coach, he will have a much larger role in the recently modified selection system.
Photo: Ashley Allen – CPL T20/CPL T20 via Getty Images.
If Bascombe has offered public explanation of the direction in which he thinks these significant changes will take regional cricket, it has escaped my attention. But the director of cricket clearly has a view on where regional cricket finds itself and what is to be done about it.
Launching the new “ground-breaking, data-driven scouting system aimed at identifying and developing the best cricketing talent across the region” earlier this month, Bascombe had a lot to say.
“We are moving into a new era of role-based, data-driven selection that will have ripple effects across our cricket system,” he told us, “from the way players prepare to the way we measure performances. In addition, it allows us to examine deficits in players and to optimize through our high-performance framework.”
“However,” he continued, “I would like to reiterate that data-driven does not only equate to stats-based—huge emphasis will be placed on qualitative data. Beyond selection, this data will be used to refine player programming, ensuring a targeted approach to getting players internationally-ready.”
We also need, he details: “Senior Talent Managers, Territorial Talent Identifiers (TTIDs) and a network of scouts […] to provide a structured, analytical approach to talent identification, […] a team of scouts trained”—and doubtless paid!—“to ensure that every performance is tracked, analyzed, and reported, creating a clear pathway for emerging cricketers to progress to the highest levels.”
Plentiful wrapping, sparse content.
“The bold new scouting model,” says the CWI release on the initiative, “represents a significant step toward revitalizing the region’s talent pipeline.”
With it, the release continues, “CWI is ensuring that West Indies cricket remains competitive on the global stage,” giving “the next generation of Caribbean cricketing talent […] a defined pathway to success.”
Photo: ICC/ Getty.
West Indies cricketers are certainly “competitive on the global stage.” Almost two dozen West Indians were shared among the six teams that competed in the recently concluded DP World ILT20 in the UAE. Included in the contingent were current ODI and T20 captains Shai Hope and Rovman Powell along with former captains Jason Holder and Nicholas Pooran.
Current holders of central contracts such as Alzarri Joseph, Akeal Hosein and Roston Chase also featured, along with Sherfane Rutherford, the only West Indian named on the ICC ODI Team of the Year 2024.
But where, pray, is the evidence to support the claim that West Indies cricket is “competitive on the global stage”?
Photo: CWI Media.
Winners in 2004, WI did not opt out of the upcoming Champions Trophy tournament—we failed to qualify. Our next global title came in the 2012 T20 World Cup followed by a clean sweep of the Men’s, Women’s and Under-19 T20 trophies in 2016.
Since then, WI have not managed to capture any major title. The Men’s team, 50-over World Cup champs in 1975 and 1979, have been regular underperformers in the T20 World Cup.
In the Test arena, Kraigg Brathwaite’s team beat Bangladesh in Bangladesh in 2020/21. They then registered their first Test win in Australia for 27 years in early 2024.
A year later came the first Test win on Pakistan soil since November 1990. Those victories apart, have we really been competing in the Test arena?
What does the record show? Brian Lara’s pithy 2007 post-retirement statement about sums up our 21st Century showing: “Devastating failures, mediocre successes.”
Since 2000, WI have played 85 series, home and away, winning a total of 21, including seven by a margin of 2-0 and two 2-1 wins over India (2002, in the second-last 5-Test series WI have played) and England (2018/19).
Additionally, apart from defeating Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, there have been 1-0 wins over Pakistan and S/Lanka and a 2-0 win over N/Zealand in 2012.
Over just the last decade, the numbers show 38 played, nine victories, a second one versus England in 2021/22, one against Afghanistan, two against Zimbabwe and four against Bangladesh. In four of the other wins, the margin was 1-0, three times 2-0.
Hardly “competitive”!
Photo: Daniel Prentice/ Gallo Images/ Wired868.
Fortunately, WI have fared rather better with the white ball. Not, however, enough to make former captain Clive Lloyd happy with our current situation.
Not for the first time, he again complained recently about how the big Test-playing countries have abandoned us in our time of need.
“Unfortunately,” the Trinidad Guardian reported him as saying, “we need things thrown our way so we’re able to compete with the bigger countries.”
Photo: Daniel Prentice/ Gallo Images/ Wired868.
Another West Indian clearly less than chuffed with the current state of West Indies cricket is Larry ‘Mr Dependable’ Gomes. On pages 22-23 of Nasser Khan’s recently published book about him, he says the following:
‘… [W]e do not have the resources to ensure that our cricketers contribute to all formats like in most of the other cricket-playing nations. The level of concentration required for the Test match and even the One-day format has been lost.
‘We live in a different world and we do not have the capacity and skills to adapt…’
Photo: Ashley Allen – CPL T20/CPL T20 via Getty Images.
Perhaps he is on the ball. Bascombe, however, clearly thinks the talent cupboards are not bare. So, during this year’s West Indies Championship, currently in progress, four regional scouts will be given the responsibility of “evaluating talent”.
Former pacer Anthony Gray is one of them. But none of Curtly Ambrose, Desmond Haynes, Brian Lara, Gus Logie, Vivian Richards or Courtney Walsh is. Coley isn’t either. Nor is Bascombe’s predecessor, Jimmy Adams.
Nor is Kieron Pollard or Dwayne Bravo. That pair presumably don’t know enough about talent to be involved in this initiative at any level.
Photo: Nicholas Bhajan/ Wired868.
Former standout regional batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan has been assigned to Guyana in the capacity of TTID. Trinidad and Tobago gets Gibran Mohammed, most recently seen as the fielding coach for the Abu Dhabi Knight Riders in the UAE’s ILT20.
Looking for an honest man, lamp in hand, Greece’s Diogenes, scoured all of Athens. In vain. Looking for a new Ian Bishop, Brian Lara, DJ Bravo, Sunil Narine, Nicholas Pooran or Lendl Simmons, Mohammed too is likely to end up empty-handed.
But he won’t have to cover every square-inch of ground between Toco and Cedros.
(via QPCC.)
Out of an abundance of caution, he might make stops at Hillview College in the east and Fatima College in the west. But given the state of the game in T&T, he can realistically content himself with a single stop in the north at Queen’s Park Cricket Club.
Haven’t they successfully built a reputation in recent times out of grabbing anything on the cricketing landscape that remotely resembles talent?
After QPCC, the TTID can start at the Caroni and move southwards, confident that there is nothing missed in the cricketing wasteland now at his back.
(via QPCC.)
Truth be told, in T&T QPCC may not publicly sell itself that way. But who in local cricket does not perceive the club as both “a clear pathway for emerging cricketers to progress to the highest levels” and for “cricketing talent […] a defined pathway to success”?
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Earl Best taught cricket, French, football and Spanish at QRC for many years and has written consistently for the Tapia and the Trinidad and Tobago Review since the 1970’s.
He is also a former sports editor at the Trinidad Guardian and the Trinidad Express and is now a senior lecturer in Journalism at COSTAATT.
