Former West Indies Youth World Cup captain and T&T senior cricketer Zaheer Ali believes that in order for the decline in West Indies cricket to be halted, the board cannot just change leadership alone but also engage in an analysis coupled with intelligent and critical thinking in order to ascertain the factors that have and continues to contribute to the decline.
“It is easy to select a “person” to lead the West Indies Cricket team perhaps even the last born child in the Caribbean could fulfil that task.
“The issue and the question that should be answered is whether the person chosen possesses the necessary attributes and qualifies to be a consistent member of the team in order to command the respect of his fellow cricketers, the people of the Caribbean and most importantly, whether he has the capacity and ability to consistently lead the team to success.
“We must appreciate as a cricketing fraternity that a team that is not scoring four hundred (400) runs consistently in an innings of a Test match or not being able to get twenty (20) wickets in a timely manner consistently, would most times be on the side of defeat and this may have little or nothing to do with captaincy apart from winning an important toss which comes down to faith.
“It is therefore important for us to recognise that there must be holistic decision making in order to be effective in addressing the challenges and not just make decisions to demonstrate that you have responded to the decline in West Indies cricket by changing the leadership for example.”
Ali, who is actively involved in national youth and community development through the Zaheer Ali Foundation admits that at regional and national levels there is a need to invest in the bank of quality and competent leaders and it is imperative that we adopt measures that will seek to achieve this objective but more importantly, to pave the way for succession planning.
“We must make certain that our leadership capacity is sufficiently developed to meet our future demands.” Ali, who is pursuing his Legal Education Certificate (L.E.C.) at Hugh Wooding, went on to highlight that the West Indies captains are not adopting a student approach and hence the lack of apparent knowledge and competence in managing cricketing issues both on and off the field. “They must be able to read the game in order to respond effectively to the particular situation. We have not being seeing this and hence the results. I advise that the management should revisit their strategies as the present approach is not reflecting a clear vision coupled with a process that would be fair and just to both the outgoing and the incoming captain.”
