Bad mentoring

Every four years there is a Cricket World Cup. The West Indies team won the first two Cricket World Cups in 1975 and 1979 and were runners-up in 1983. We were champions of this sport and looked the part—menacing. Then we changed. After occupying the basement of the eight top cricketing nations’ rankings for so long, we failed to qualify for the 2023 Cricket World Cup.

At that time, we heard the familiar refrains: Cricket management wanted a fresh start and our support. The head coach wanted the players to believe in themselves and the team. The captain wanted to return to the drawing board. Past players wanted more investments in school and club cricket. Everyone repeated their tired, useless lines on cue while ignoring the glaring problem—and its obvious solution.

Talented and hard working

Our players are talented. They win matches against much higher ranked opponents. Our players are also hard working. They do what coaches ask of them during practice. But in competitive sports, talent and hard work must stand on firm foundations—and our boys had them.

Our players qualified for a place on the West Indies team full of promise. They were trained by school coaches and had the support of their families, schools and churches. Then something seems to go terribly wrong.

Corrupting the foundation

We used to hopefully watch when our players started a new tour, but are now accustomed to them playing part of the tour with energy, and the remainder with lethargic carelessness. When I questioned past team managers on this consistent observation, the problem was revealed.

Despite having a curfew, players would be known to leave the hotel to revel, and then bring women into their rooms. What we saw on our television screens, as we desperately willed them to win, were players too tired from the night’s activities to play consistently at the level required of professional athletes.

Encouraging young players to become connoisseurs of liquor, to distinguish the good stuff from the ordinary, may harm their otherwise promising careers. Encouraging young players to become promiscuous exposes them to a host of curable and incurable sexually transmitted diseases.

Destroyers of dreams

Senior players should mentor younger players to reach higher standards, but they may be incapable of doing this if they were badly mentored themselves. Leading younger players down a path of clubbing, liquor and promiscuity can only erode their foundations and train them to become bad mentors of newer team members.

Racism

So, what is the solution? We had one. In January 2019 we employed a coach to prepare our team for the England tour in February 2019 and the World Cup in May 2019. He seemed to recognise the problem—our players needed stern fatherly direction. The change was rapid—we won the test series 2-1, our first series win over the much higher-ranked England in ten years.

In our excitement, we momentarily forgot that we do not care about real success, only appearances. We decided that the glory of winning the World Cup must not be given to this coach—who happened to be white—so we fired him.

The players wanted their coach but were told that they needed a coach that could “get along with the boys”. The World Cup results for our team were foreseen. Other teams came prepared to play cricket, while we came prepared to sport designer shades and earrings. Of the ten teams in the tournament, we ended second from the bottom, only higher than war-torn Afghanistan. Four years later, we could not even qualify for the 2023 tournament, and we just lost the test series against Australia in an embarrassing fashion—but we looked sporty.

Nostalgic solution

We keep hoping for some nostalgic solutions to improve the West Indies cricket team, but Frank Worrell is not coming back. What is needed are two clauses in the players’ contracts to be enforced with zero-tolerance.

The first is that no alcohol is to be consumed from the start of the training camp until the end of the final match of a tour. The second is that during a tour, curfews will be strictly enforced to allow players eight hours of rest. Both policies should give our boys the energy to both concentrate and perform.

Depending on how far the contagion has spread, players, coaches and management will likely object. But we should remind them that we: (i) have tolerated their wayward ways for far too long, (ii) are dissatisfied with their inconsistent performances and (iii) will not allow another generation of young cricketers to be badly mentored.

Grenville Phillips II is a Doctor of Engineering and a Chartered Structural Engineer. He can be reached at NextParty246@gmail.com