Dear Editor: You could pick who you want as coach and captain—WI problems run deep

“[…] You could pick who you want at this point in time. You could pick whatever coach, he could come from where.

“[…] The whole question of grooming and developing sports people is not just you pick some fellas because they make some runs in the first-class competition. The first-class competition is very poor. The reason for that is that the players coming into the first-class competition are poor.

“The reason why they are poor is because we have not made the investment in modern sports development…”

The following Letter to the Editor on the issues plaguing West Indies cricket was submitted to Wired868 by Gerry Kangalee of Rambert Village, Trinidad:

Well, here we go again. For the last 25 to 30 years, we’re making the same, same complaint. This one must go, the coach must go, the captain must go, drop this one, pick that one. That is not the problem.

You could pick who you want at this point in time. You could pick whatever coach, he could come from where. Some people calling for a foreign coach. They had foreign coaches already and we still used to get we ass cut.

We have found ourselves in a position where international sport and not only cricket has become globalized and professionalized and it has become commercialized to a great extent. That means that millions and millions and sometimes billions of dollars are being invested in international sport.

And what that says is that talent spotting comes from a very young age. The whole question of grooming and developing sports people is not just you pick some fellas because they make some runs in the first-class competition.

The first-class competition is very poor. The reason for that is that the players coming into the first-class competition are poor.

The reason why they are poor is because we have not made the investment in modern sports development. In terms of developing sports people, it’s not only a question of facilities and so on.

You have to have proper facilities. But if you look at international sport, young people are entering into their sporting discipline at a very young age—sometimes under the age of 10. You already spot those talents and you carry it forward.

But here we have amateur sports. In the 80s, amateur sports was the thing worldwide. And not just about cricket… right across the board. We have been left behind.

Globalization, the development of capitalism, particularly through the question of who controls the sports: the big communication companies, the television companies, the big tech firms and so on—that money is being invested at a particular level. We are not investing at that level.

What kind of youth programs do we have? We just pick some fellas from some schools and so on and we say, oh, you go and play under-19 cricket.

The last under-19 team from Trinidad and Tobago get licked up by the United States. There are two United States under-19 teams playing in our competition and they cut our ass.

So we could drop Daren Sammy. We could drop who we want. We could pick this captain, pick that captain. Since Chris Gayle and Brian Lara and them days we getting licks.

So let we be serious. If we want sports to move on to a particular level, the investment has to be done at the grassroots level.

At the amateur level, we could get away with that. In those days, in the eighties, we could say, well, you know, cricket is a big scene. Look, everybody plays cricket. They’re playing in the road, cricket on the beaches. We have this culture in the Caribbean. That was for then.

For now, we have to professionalize the thing. We have to commercialize the thing. We have to invest in youth, in sports development at a young age.

They’re going to bring in Gayle and Lara and Shivnarine Chanderpaul and them—and they’re going to talk and thing. And that is not going to change anything at the ground level.

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