By Tony McWatt
The 2023 New Year will mark the 95th anniversary of West Indies’ Test cricket entry. Just five years short of the coveted 2028 centennial. As such 2023 should be regarded as a prime time for the Caribbean region’s cricket administrators to re-establish the long since crumbling pillars that had once provided a very solid foundation for the West Indies previously experienced success as undisputed World Test Champions.
There have previously been two distinct periods of such success. The first was during the approximate five years from 1963 to 1968 when the Gary Sobers-led West Indians triumphed over all adversaries including Australia. The second was even more distinctively from 1979 through to 1995, under the initial leadership of Clive Lloyd immediately followed by that of Viv Richards.
Between January 1962 and December 1967, the West Indies played 25 Tests winning 16, drawing seven and losing only two! From January 1979 to December 1995, a period of no less than 16 years, the West Indies incredibly played 134 Test matches, 66 of which were won, 49 drawn and astonishingly only 19 were lost!
Barbados Today’s November 9, 2022 Wickets Hitting article argued that the foregoing West Indies cricket’s former achieved heights of global domination was based on a four-pillar foundation which has now all been dismantled. The four identified pillars were a) the widespread popularity of cricket throughout the Caribbean to such a degree that almost every male child wanted to be the next great West Indies cricketer; b) a preponderance of well-known heroes for young aspiring cricketers to emulate; c) the sense of pride and national hero type recognition that was associated with becoming a West Indies player that existed to such a degree as to influence every aspiring cricketers to do whatever was necessary on their own violation to become the very best and last arguably most importantly d) the availability of English County and League opportunities which allowed the Caribbean region’s most talented players to further hone their skills through an engagement in the rigorous requirements of professional cricket.
As suggested in the November 9th Wickets Hitting article, the recapturing and restoration of such global domination simply requires the reconstruction or satisfactory replacement of each of those four identified pillars. Thankfully, Cricket West Indies (CWI) has now finally started to address the most important of the four: the need to provide Caribbean cricketers with much-increased match play exposure to four-day cricket.
CWI’s principal administrative practitioners, the Jimmy and Johnny Double J combination, have seemingly now finally abandoned their molasses slow joyride dray cart for a far more progressive vehicle with their recent, most welcomed, announcement of a revised and renewed 2023 Regional 4Day Championships. The new format will at least serve as a temporary boost replacement for the no longer abundant, now severely restricted, opportunities for Caribbean players to ply their trade professionally in England’s numerous Counties and Leagues.
CWI’s announced 2023 tournament is a highly commendable start that can and must be built upon from 2024 onwards. The 2023 schedule’s five-match format must be extended even further to 14 home and away matches through the addition of an Academy Under-25 as well as a Combined Campuses and Collages and (Triple C) teams.
All seven teams must be made into fully professional franchises, participating in all three formats T20s, 50 Overs and Four-Days, under a single name. No more Barbados Pride for one format and Tridents for another. Likewise for the Guyana Harpy Eagles/Amazon Warriors; Jamaica Scorpions/Tallawahs etc. Just one uniform name for each participating franchise, including the two new entries, the Academy Under-25s and the Triple C. In terms of the Triple C, fringe players from the six CWI member territories who might not initially qualify for selection to their respective National squads should be provided with cricket scholarships to attend one of the participating UWI campuses. The implementation of such an initiative would offer the dual benefits of strengthening the Triple C squad, as well as creating a core of university-educated cricketers for potential further involvement as regional administrators.
Each Franchise should also have a National Headquarters with an established Academy titled after some most recently famous former West Indies players. Thereby serving to also re-establish the second pillar of well-known heroes for aspiring current players to emulate.
The 3Ws oval-based Barbados Franchise’s Academy can perhaps be jointly named after Gordon Greenidge, Joel Garner and Desmond Haynes. For Guyana, a government-refurbished Georgetown Cricket Club Bourda ground, can be used as the headquarters for its National Franchise and appropriately named after the Club’s most famous West Indies players Alvin Kallicharran, Carl Hooper and Shivnarine Chanderpaul.
Similar venues and appropriate names can be identified for the remaining franchises. For Trinidad, the Brian Lara Academy is, of course, already most appropriately named and requires no additional nomenclature.
The Coolidge Cricket Center-based CWI Academy Franchise, expanded as suggested to include Under-25 players, can perhaps be named after Gary Sobers and Clive Lloyd in recognition of their respective leadership stints at the helm of the 1962 to 1968 and 1979 to 1984 world-dominating West Indies teams. Likewise, the Triple C Franchise should similarly be named after Sir Frank Worrell and one or two other accomplished former players who may have had a UWI involvement at some point in their respective careers.
The immediate question that will, of course, arise is exactly where the required funding for such grandiose plans will come from. For starters, as the noted Regional Radio Cricket Commentator Joseph “Reds” Perreira has recently suggested, Exxon should be encouraged to spread some of its mammoth shares of Guyana’s recently acquired significant oil wealth with the rest of the Caribbean. Exxon’s multi-year title sponsorship of all West Indies teams, Men’s and Women’s as well as that of the Regional Four Day Championships, would serve as a solid foundation for the acquisition of the required funding.
A percentage of the funds received by both CWI, as well as the regional member boards, from the Indian Premier League provided stipends for Caribbean players who have been drafted to participate in each year’s edition should also be directed as funding for the targeted Franchise Academies. National government funding, particularly from the Tourism Ministries should also be solicited and acquired as a source of funding. Same for the financial support of major National based, regionally oriented Corporations. The Barbados-based Sagicor, Guyana’s Demerara Distilleries and Jamaica’s Grace Foods are among those which immediately come to mind.
Finally, there is of course also the potential for a significant amount of funds to be raised from the monetization of the expressed interest by fans of West Indies cricket, the number of which has been reportedly cited to be more than 2.3 million worldwide. Consider the following; if 10% of such fans, as conservative an estimate as one out of every 10, can be convinced to become registered, dues-paying members of an established official CWI Fan Club with a slew of benefits provided for their minimal yearly memberships of US$25, less than $3.00 per month, the resulting generated annual revenues would be approximately US$5,750,000. Add to that associated merchandising revenues from sales of West Indies and National Franchise team shirts, caps and other available paraphernalia.
In 2018, towards that end and mere weeks after Ricky Skerritt had assumed its presidential reins, a detailed proposal was presented to CWI by yours truly for the monetization of the reported 2.3 million West Indies cricket fan base as a source of annual revenues. CWI’s emailed response to the proposal was that its own plans for exactly such an initiative were already being developed.
Of course, at no point during President Skerritt’s entire first term did evidence of any such plans ever surface, let alone materialize. Though, one of the initiatives listed in the Skerritt-Shallow second-term manifesto was “the monetization of West Indies cricket’s fan interest!
Now just three months shy of the culmination of their second and thankfully final term, the manifesto-listed fan monetization initiative has become yet another addition to the extensive list of broken promises made by the soon-to-be departing Skerritt-Shallow administration. It was, however, very heartening to read the respected Barbadian Dr Basil Springer’s reference to West Indies cricket fan base monetization in his recent Barbados Today article. Now that it has been suggested by an esteemed Barbadian academic, perhaps someone at CWI will finally wake up and smell the coffee in terms of the very real possibilities and viability of fan base monetization as a source of significant annual revenues.
If West Indies cricket is to be restored to anything close to its former world-conquering glory any time soon, the practices and procedures required for the fulfilment of such a lofty objective must be commenced immediately. The 2023 New Year must, therefore, be graced with attempted renewed attempts for the restoration of the identified foundational pillars of our formerly achieved success. In terms of the participating personnel, however, there must also be a complete housecleaning of all the existing proven administrative square pegs. Out with the old; In with the new.
Here’s wishing you all a most happy and prosperous 2023 New Year!
Guyana-born Tony McWatt is the Publisher of both the WI Wickets and Wickets/monthly online cricket magazines that are respectively targeted toward Caribbean and Canadian readers. He is also the only son of the former Guyana and West Indies wicket-keeper batsman the late Clifford “Baby Boy” McWatt.
