Coaches are not the answer

Jun 04, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – So the West Indies cricket team now has two new white and red ball coaches and as much as six assistant coaches. But not many people are enthusiastic that this will make much of a difference to the team’s fortunes.

The senior male West Indies team has had a string of coaches over the past 30 years and this has done little to better team’s performance.  Cricket West Indies has tried Rohan Kanhai, Andy Roberts, Malcolm Marshall, Viv Richards ( interim), Roger Harper, Gus Logie, Bennett King, David Moore, John Dyson, David Williams, Ottis Gibson,  Stuart Law, Nic Photas ( interim), Richard Pybus (interim), Floyd Reifer (interim) and Phil  Simmons, and have not had much success.

Cricket West Indies even tried having a combination of a Head coach, a batting coach and a bowling coach. This too did not lead to much of a difference in the team’s fortunes.

The problem is not the coaches. There is only so much a coach can do. It is like a training a racehorse. If the horse cannot run, there is only so much that the trainer can do. And this is the dilemma which faces the West Indies cricket team: no amount of coaches can transform a weak team into the sort of squads led by Clive Lloyd in the 1980 and early 1990’s.

By the time a player debuts for the West Indies, his technique would have been set including the bad habits. There is only so much correction which can be done by the coaches. And given the limited time that the coaches have with the players, it is hard for them to correct the major technical flaws in a batsman. During a series, there is not much a coach can do with a team other than ensure that they keep fit and stick to their training schedules.

Given the sort of money which the players make today, some of them feel that they are better than and that the do not need coaching. A West Indies coach was seen looking on at his team warm-up session from behind the pavilion fence, so alienated he was from the team. One coach was even told that he did not have a good test average.

Coaches are not the answer to the problem facing West Indies cricket. The dominant West Indies team from 1977 onwards did not have coaches. When the team played it had a manager and physiotherapist. The key to winning was not the coaches and support staff as it was the captain and the players and the exposure the players received by playing County Cricket in England.

Not all the players in the dominant West Indies team plied their trade in England. A number of players emerged as world-class batsmen and blowers from regional cricket. But many of the players who did well for the West Indies came to the fore because of playing country cricket in England.

Playing professional cricket enhanced the skills of players. It made them better players. When the English cricket authorities decided to limit the number of overseas players who can play country cricket that was when the moment the standard of West Indian senior teams began to decline.

But it was not the only factor. It has been said that the region did not put in place a development programme. But there was no development programme in the past and we still produced the great players such as Andy Roberts, Malcolm Marshall, Colin Croft, Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Sylvester Clarke, Wayne Daniels, Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Desmond Haynes, Alvin Kallicharran, Shivnarine Chanderpual, Gus Logie, Jeff Dujon Ramnaresh Sarwan, Carl Hooper and Brian Lara.

Cricket West Indies and the fans of the regional team have to face up to certain realities. The first is that the standard of regional cricket is not that high and this is the pool from which the regional side is drawn. The standard of regional cricket is not going to be developed by a centrally directed development programme. That has not worked. It is for the regional Boards to improve domestic cricket and this is not going to happen when governments are seeking to interfere in the administration of cricket and when the resources are not there to improve domestic cricket.

Second, the reality must be faced that the foreign teams have gotten better, including by investing in modern training facilities. Unless we begin to improve the standard of training at the national and club levels, West Indies cricket will remain in the doldrums.

No amount of cutting and chopping of coaches will transform the fortunes of the West Indies Cricket. Cricket West Indies needs to return to the basics.