BY GORDON WILLIAMS, Contributor
( L - R ) Ken Gordon and Jimmy Adams
FORMER WEST INDIES captain Jimmy Adams believes the blame for the current team's poor form should not be dumped on the players alone, but shared by those in charge of the region's cricket, who stumbled on an era of success, but failed to fully capitalise on it over the long-term.
"We (in the Caribbean) lack a structure for a lot of our organisations and West Indies cricket reflects that," said the 37-year-old former middle-order batsman from Jamaica who played 54 Tests and 127 one-day internationals.
"The sad thing for me is that the players, being the window into West Indies cricket, are the ones who are going to cop the flak for performances and all the rest of it, when the truth is that the players are a product of a system which is poorly planned, if planned at all."
Adams spoke to STAR Sportswhile in Florida earlier this month to play in a 20/20 tournament featuring a team of past West Indies players. That same weekend most of the current West Indies team returned to the Caribbean from Australia where they were beaten 3-0 in another dismal Test series.
He said the successful West Indies teams of the 1970s, '80s and early '90s benefited from a favourable environment, not created by the game's administrators, and which hardly exists today.
LUCK
"A lot of what was happening structurally, a lot of it was luck," Adams said. "County cricket (in England), which was a finishing school for our cricketers, had nothing to do with us. We didn't plan county cricket. It was there, we used it. Now that it is not readily available, what have we done in the interim to provide that quality for young players? I don't know. I think there's a lot that we could do in terms of development within our system that we haven't done, and our cricket reflects that."
Adams' criticism of the leadership of West Indies cricket was backed by Ken Gordon, the current head of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB).
"The problems that we areexperiencing now are not problems that you can blame the last board, or perhaps even the previous board for," Gordon told this reporter last month in Jamaica. "They go back to the late '80s." Gordon, who is also chairman of CWC 2007, said past WICB administrations did not keep abreast of changes that crept into the international game.
"We didn't do our jobs," said Gordon, who officially took over as WICB president in August. "We just assumed talent would continue to be the answer and we have an unending reservoir which would throw up that talent. It doesn't work like that.
"The rules changed under them (the past WICB administrations) and they were not part of that change. They continued to feel 'OK, we're on top, we're producing the players ...They didn't realise that the time had come when talent was just part of it, but professionalism was, if anything, a bigger part of it and you had to develop a different type of player," he added.
Adams has no doubt that the cricket talent or "raw material" as he called it is still available in West Indies. But, while welcoming the news that Windies Test players will be offered professional retainer contracts, he said focus should be on the struggling lower levels.
"...There is no excuse for the dramatic fall in standards in our schools cricket, in our club cricket, in our national cricket, given that we have the raw material," Adams said, referring specifically to Jamaica. "What you're telling me is that you have no system or structure to pull that raw material through to something that is acceptable at Test level. As long as you keep depending on quote, unquote talent, I think we're going to have problems...Talent by itself means nothing."
Gordon theorised that the Windies' failure to adapt, even while at the top, may have resulted from inflated egos.
"When you're winning your head (gets) stuck sometimes a little too high in the air and you don't look down," he said.
It took the decline of the Australian teams, which coincided with the rise of the Windies, to force a change of attitude Down Under, Gordon offered as an example. The Aussies placed more emphasis on a professional approach to the game which spawned tougher and more disciplined players who propelled them back to the top. A similar approach is being pursued in the West Indies, he added, as all is not lost.
"We will build on that," Gordon explained, "and, because of the innate talent we've been able to spew out over a period of time, I feel certain our players will respond to it quickly."
Meanwhile, Adams, who plays league cricket in England, has a soft spot for the current players, many who he believes have not been prepared for the task they're being asked to perform.
"It saddens me a little bit for a lot of these young players because they genuinely, I believe, are willing," said the man who scored six Test centuries and more than 3,000 runs at an average of 41.26 per inning.
"They are genuinely able. (But) they're being drafted into a level of cricket where they are a few years behind, I think, players of similar ability, but who have come through systems and structures that are put in place to pull them to that level a lot earlier."
- Gordon Williams is a Jamaican journalist based in the United States.
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