Crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tor Dr Allen Sam­my be­lieves that whole­sale changes in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of West In­dies crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tion, will be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive to the re­vival of the re­gion's for­tunes at the Test and One-Day-In­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. Dr Sam­my, one of two Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (T&TCB) rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the WICB Board of Di­rec­tors be­lieves that the ma­jor stake­hold­ers in Caribbean crick­et are not so much more fo­cused on or­gan­i­sa­tion­al ef­fec­tive­ness as they are in mat­ters af­fect­ing the re­gion­al team's climb back to the top. "The West In­dies Crick­et Board has been round­ly crit­i­cised when the re­gion­al team un­der­per­forms and some glibly call for the re­moval of Board mem­bers at every turn. How­ev­er, what is need­ed is an ef­fec­tive link be­tween the WICB and the ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards to pur­sue their plans and poli­cies," said Dr Sam­my.

He said this "link" is a key fac­tor in the fu­ture suc­cess of the West In­dies team and the lo­cal re­gion­al ad­min­is­tra­tors will be asked to buy in­to the way for­ward as es­poused in the draft doc­u­ment ti­tled a "Frame­work for WICB Strate­gic Plan 2011 to 2016." Dr Sam­my was speak­ing ahead of a vis­it to T&T to­day by Ernest Hil­iare, the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the WICB who is mak­ing a swing through the Caribbean ad­dress­ing lo­cal crick­et of­fi­cials on key el­e­ments of the Draft. Hil­iare will speak to of­fi­cials of the T&TCB, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Na­tion­al League clubs, Women's Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion, of­fi­cials of the Pri­ma­ry and Sec­ondary schools leagues, To­ba­go clubs and the Um­pires and Scor­ers as­so­ci­a­tion from 5.30 pm at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va. Dr Sam­my re­vealed that last year, the WICB Di­rec­tors con­tract­ed De­loitte, an in­ter­na­tion­al con­sult­ing firm to un­der­take a re­view of all the pre­vi­ous strate­gic plans which ad­dressed all is­sues con­fronting the re­gion­al game.

De­loitte al­so vis­it­ed the six ma­jor crick­et play­ing na­tions in the re­gion as well as sev­er­al oth­er as­so­ciate mem­bers gath­er­ing da­ta be­fore sub­mit­ting the Draft Strate­gic Plan 2011-2016 for dis­cus­sion in the in­di­vid­ual ter­ri­to­ries. "The next step is to gen­er­ate dis­cus­sion among the ma­jor stake­hold­ers and this is what Mr Hil­iare has em­barked up­on. He has al­ready vis­it­ed a cou­ple is­lands in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos and Do­mini­ca and will be com­ing here to talk about the doc­u­ment and get a feed­back," said Dr Sam­my. He said the WICB di­rec­tors al­ready had a chance to have their say on the Draft at their last meet­ing in April and fol­low­ing Hil­iare's so­journ through­out the re­gion, the doc­u­ment will go back to the WICB Board lat­er this year for fi­nal dis­cus­sion and adop­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the draft, the Strate­gic Plan is ground­ed in the WICB's Vi­sion State­ment, Mis­sion and Core Val­ues which has been re­viewed be­cause of the chang­ing land­scape of in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et and its ef­fect on the or­gan­i­sa­tion of crick­et in the Caribbean. The Core Val­ues com­prise in­tegri­ty, re­spect, team­work, di­ver­si­ty, ac­count­abil­i­ty and in­no­va­tion. The Mis­sion is to man­age, de­vel­op and pro­mote crick­et to the ben­e­fit and en­joy­ment of the West In­di­an peo­ple and en­sure suc­cess at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el.