Tony Becca

ACCORDING TO the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), West Indies cricket, based on its Strategic Plan and mainly its three specific objectives, will be back on top or near to the top of world cricket in the next four years.

Based on its strategic plan as released a few days ago, the West Indies teams will improve its current standing and will be among the top four teams in the world by 2012. The WICB will be a world-class organisation that is flexible, responsive and accountable by 2012, and the WICB will develop cricket at all levels and in all countries of the region and will have a 300 per cent increase in the pool of available players for each aspect of the sport by 2012.

According to board president Dr. Julian Hunte, the future actions of the WICB will be determined by the recommendations of the Governance Review Committee report and the Strategic Plan, and if he really means that, it would be great for West Indies cricket, even though four years to make it back to the top seems nothing but wishful thinking.

Dr. Hunte is passionate about West Indies cricket and I know he will do everything in his power, including courting the involvement of the former great players, to get West Indies cricket back to the top.

There are two questions which must be asked, however.

Duplicates

Apart from those on the cricket committee, does he have enough people around him, or in the territorial boards, who understand the game to lead its development in the region and the development of the players? And, does he have enough people around him, or in the territorial boards, who are as passionate as he is, who really see the need for it, and who have the expertise to run West Indies cricket as a business and to find money for West Indies cricket?

In this world, anything is possible, but unless there are changes in the membership of the board, while number one of his main objectives seems possible, number two appears highly improbable, number three almost impossible, and the hope of a professional league in 2009, which is next year, seems like an improbable if not impossible dream.

Promises

Over the years, the board has made many promises and it has failed to deliver on most of them. Hopefully, these three objectives, plus the professional league, are not just talk after yet another strategic meeting in another hotel around the Caribbean.

There are only three things that can take West Indies cricket back to the top: one is the people's love for the game, one is participation and development at the school and the club levels and one is money.

The board, therefore, needs to promote the game at every level more, and much more at that; it needs to concentrate and to spend some money, plenty money at that, on cricket in the schools and in the clubs, it needs a professional league so that the skilled players can earn money from the game so that they have time to practice and to train and the board needs to find money - and plenty of it at that.

With cricket losing so much of its popularity that the big matches in the region, territory versus territory, are no longer broadcast over the radio, the board needs money to promote the game, to develop the game and to nurture and develop skills.

People, by nature, however, do not like to throw away money and the board can only find that money and will only find that money if the game returns to its popularity of days gone by.

Can the West Indies get back to the position they held for a while back in the 1960s and to the position they held for a long time from back in the middle of the 1970s to the middle of the 1990s?

They can, but it seems, at least to me, that despite all the talk and all the plans, it will take longer than four years and, in spite of all the talk about playing cricket the West Indian way, all the talk about the style and the popularity of West Indies cricket, especially so with a foreign coach in charge of West Indies cricket.

Following on the heels of the release of its plan to be back at the top of the world in four years, however, the board announced the appointment of Omar Khan as the team's new manager and that was a good selection.

No question

Khan has been the manager of the Trinidad and Tobago team for the past five years. There is no question that he has been a good manager, there is no question that he has a wonderful personality, there is no question that he gets along nicely with the players and the coach and there is no question that he respects the players and that he treats them well.

As a graduate of the University of the West Indies, as corporate communications manager of The Power Generation Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited, as chairman of the national stadium in Trinidad and Tobago, and as a member of state boards in his home country, including the National Energy Corporation, Khan is a man of substance and integrity.

If he can get the West Indies team to be as united as T&T appears to be, he will be a successful manager and one of the best for a long time in West Indies cricket.