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There’s no point in crying over spilt milk. The exercise now is to analyse and evaluate the reason for the cricketers of the West Indies’ poor performances and to rescue West Indians from further disgrace.
The administration, which includes the coaches and the captain, is as much at a loss as the fed-up fan who is quite angry at the bad cricket being played by a group of small islands that conquered the world with their rise to the top, playing scintillating cricket and becoming very popular wherever the game is played.
The question now remains, why was the milk spilt?
There are many explanations, factors and excuses but it boils down to one reason and one alone, and that is a lack of practice, driven by indiscipline from all concerned.
One could have noticed the wobbling of the virtues that make a team successful. Those in charge never detected the small cracks appearing in its body. They did not know enough cricket to understand.
Success is based on being better than one’s opponent.
This can only be achieved by fine-tuning the ability and skill of the players to a point of sharpness that provides superiority. Alex Ferguson, that most victorious of football managers, who coached Manchester United, the English League team, to many successes, wrote in his autobiography, Managing My Life: “Every one of the 25 years I have spent as a club manager has been a learning experience…Prominent in that category is the certainty that good coaching relies on repetition. Forget all the nonsense about altering training programmes to keep players happy. The argument that they must be stimulated by constant variety may come across as progressive and enlightened but it is a dangerous evasion of priorities.
“In any physical activity, effective practise requires repeated execution of the skill involved…When footballers complain about the dullness of repetitive passing exercises it is usually not monotony they resent but hard work.”
There’s a lot more, but this is the gist of what he’s saying, and why he was so successful. And that is WI’s problem, a lack of serious practice.
In the recent past, I have observed the WI team at practice at the Queen’s Park Oval and it is a sad sight to behold an absence of seriousness and insufficient preparation; the length of time utilised could be laughable if it wasn’t critical.The breakdown of discipline is the spilt milk. The cricketers ought to be practising at least six hours a day, every available day, but they don’t. For at least 25 years this has been going on, because captains, coaches and managers during that time allowed the players to have their way – especially if those particular players are doing well. It comes about because the administrators believe that the players know more than they do, hence they follow their advice.
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There’s always excessive talk to the players in the dressing room, but hardly does one hear any talk from the coaches about practice. One coach said after the Netherlands game that the squad was given a day off. Unbelievable.
After the Kerry Packer stint, it was said and admitted by players, that that’s when WI cricketers became professional. They were threatened by Packer himself with being sent back home if they didn’t start winning. And what did they do? Practise. In addition, they hired an Aussie trainer, Dennis Waite, to get them fit. Hours every day at practice, unless they were playing a game, and they won every game and all the prizes.
After Packer, the team went on to win every Test series for 15 years. Why? They learnt discipline and its attributes. By the discipline of regular practice for long hours, the cricketer, like any other top professional sportsman, acquires the virtues of application, the right attitude, concentration, good habits and the proper use of one’s ability, self-confidence, shaping it into a positive force to play successfully.
The present team, which has led the WI into the cricket dungeon for lack of performance, would improve with the right coaching, hopefully by Daren Sammy, who has to learn how to motivate players by giving them strenuous activity through many practice hours, which is the work the side needs.
Stop all the talk and just instruct them to practise six-eight hours a day so that they will be fit and ready to compete and win. Of course, this means hard work in all the disciplines – batting, bowling and fielding – in all formats.
 
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