BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) – Cricket West Indies chief executive officer, Johnny Grave, has warned there is “no easy fix” for the Caribbean side’s decline but has backed the board’s “clear strategic plan” to revive their fortunes over the long term.
Stressing that West Indies cricket had deteriorated gradually over the last decade, Grave said only hard work “on and off the field”, and continued “honest conversations” among all stakeholders in coming years, would see West Indies return to the pinnacle.
West Indies’ woes were brought sharply into focus again when they slumped to a 2-0 whitewash on the recent tour of New Zealand, losing both Tests inside four days.
“I think it is hard work at all levels. I think we’re going through a transformation of Cricket West Indies (CWI) – we’ve got a clear strategic plan,” Grave told Starcom Radio’s Mason and Guest cricket show.
“This isn’t an overnight thing that’s happened with West Indies cricket and I think we’ve got to continue to have honest conversations throughout the whole system.
“This isn’t a recent decline. We went there (New Zealand) in 2017 and had exactly the same [results]. We lost the T20s, ODIs and the Test matches by similar margins in many respects and we’ve been ranked ninth in the world for nearly half a decade.
Producing the best talent is one of the aims of the CWI strategic plan.
“So this isn’t something that has suddenly happened. We haven’t gone from the top of the world before the New Zealand tour to ninth. New Zealand, probably back in 2014, were in a similar position on and off the field and it’s taken hard work, it’s taken a clear strategic plan and vision to get New Zealand cricket from that point to where they are today, and Cricket West Indies need to do exactly the same.”
He continued: “We’ve got a plan to transform the organisation on and off the field that we’re implementing. Clearly COVID-19 and the pandemic has been difficult for us and a setback on many fronts but the hard work continues and that’s what it’s going to take.
“There’s no easy fix, there’s no silver bullet that suddenly means we’re going to be number one in the world tomorrow. It’s going to take hard work throughout the entire system, all stakeholders working together to get Cricket West Indies and our teams back to the top of the world.”
Grave said CWI had already started the rebuild with the overhauling of the entire selection process at all levels, to ensure the best calibre of player was chosen to represent the international teams.
Additionally, the Englishman said investments were continuously being made in coaching development, sports science and fitness while organisationally, the board had undertaken reviews of his financial, human resource and information technology structures in order to become more efficient.
Referencing the recent Wehby Report, Grave also explained it was the board’s hope that the governance structure of CWI could also be addressed.
Singling out the area of player fitness, Grave said CWI would continue to pay special attention to this aspect of player development.
“We need to continue to push the whole sports science and medicine programme within the West Indies system,” Grave pointed out.
“Not just at the international level but at the franchise level to ensure that we have our best players available for our selectors, that we are appropriately managing injury prevention and recovery and continue to drive fitness standards throughout the region.”
He continued: “Our facilities, if we’re honest, are not on par with other international teams so our players are not playing and practicing in the best facilities, as other modern international players would, so we know we’ve made a massive investment in buying the Coolidge Cricket Ground in Antigua.
“We want to develop it into our world class high performance centre and that’s a big part of our strategic plan.
“None of these plans are suddenly going to be a magic wand for improvements overnight but it’s going to take continued investment, real focus on the strategic plan on what we need to do to get back to the top, to produce better players, to produce winning teams and that’s what we need to focus on.”
