Alvin Corneal

There are nu­mer­ous in­stances in life which would en­able me to re­mem­ber the feel­ings of hav­ing to ac­cept de­feat im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing con­vinc­ing vic­to­ry.

It is ap­pro­pri­ate at this time to re­late to the pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ences which bring the painful feel­ing of a de­feat fol­low­ing an out­stand­ing vic­to­ry.

We can re­fer to many sit­u­a­tions for which our sports­men and women must be con­scious, es­pe­cial­ly as we have en­joyed huge mo­ments of joy from a javelin throw, a na­tion­al crick­et ti­tle in the Caribbean T20 tour­na­ment, a world cham­pi­onship T20 crick­et ti­tle, and to a less­er ex­tent, suc­cess­ful win­ning ways to­wards the World Cup U-17 fi­nals and al­so the Gold Cup Fi­nal.

To have cher­ished these mo­ments will not be dif­fi­cult to ex­plain, and the mem­o­ry of na­tion­al ap­pre­ci­a­tion by lin­ing the streets with the na­tion's flags, mul­ti­ple TV clips of the high-pro­file per­form­ers, have left many of our peo­ple liv­ing in sev­enth heav­en, for the time be­ing.

The bril­liance of our crick­et team, which lit­er­al­ly mes­merised the rest of the re­gion with some fine dis­plays of the short­er for­mat of the game, has ac­tu­al­ly brought all and sundry to­wards stretch­ing their imag­i­na­tion to­wards the ul­ti­mate goal of win­ning the IPL Club cham­pi­onships next Sep­tem­ber.

While we all strive for this type of suc­cess, we must be aware of the chal­lenges ahead which now iden­ti­fy us as cham­pi­ons and tar­gets for every­one to bat­tle for the crown which lies on our heads.

More than that is the dan­ger which suc­cess tends to bring sub­con­scious­ly in­to the minds of our play­ers, ad­min­is­tra­tors and sup­port­ers alike.

The ma­jor ques­tion which must be ad­dressed, de­spite the vic­to­ries, is: How best can we im­prove on the pre­vi­ous per­for­mances?

Iron­i­cal­ly enough, with­in the for­mat and dis­play which brought suc­cess, are ar­eas which could need se­ri­ous ad­just­ments in or­der to move fur­ther ahead in the quest for su­prema­cy in any sport.

Sure­ly, the bur­den of a gold medal on Wal­cott's neck has brought at­ten­tion to the en­tire world, es­pe­cial­ly the com­peti­tors who were close enough to recog­nise that it may have been hu­man er­ror which failed to al­low them to achieve their goals.

The sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in the dis­tances thrown in the Lon­don Olympics, may take the blame for the young T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tive's sur­prise vic­to­ry.

Now the onus is on him to seek vast im­prove­ment in all as­pects of the sport so that the gap will be­come even greater in four years.

In the case of the team sports, the fo­cus for con­sis­ten­cy has a bas­ket full of ar­eas which need im­prove­ment, many of which we tend to ig­nore be­cause of our ab­solute dom­i­nance of the re­cent com­pe­ti­tion.

Con­sis­ten­cy is easy to spell, but the ac­qui­si­tion of this phe­nom­e­non is more sci­en­tif­ic than it is about go­ing to the nets to bowl, bat or field.

Tak­ing a close look at the young play­ers, it seems clear to me that play­ers like Sim­mons, Perkins, Barath, and new­com­er Lewis, need to have the ex­pert knowl­edge of tech­ni­cal and tac­ti­cal ad­just­ments in their plans for play­ing in­nings rather than just try­ing to beat every ball out of the ground.

Mis­field­ing, which oc­curred far too of­ten in the re­cent se­ries, should not be al­lowed to go un­no­ticed, es­pe­cial­ly as we may well ob­serve that all the crick­et­ing coun­tries across the world have im­proved con­sid­er­ably in that de­part­ment of the game.

Even the ex­tra­or­di­nary de­cep­tion of Sunil Nar­ine can be crit­i­cal­ly scru­ti­nised and guid­ed by some of the for­mer ex­perts of the wrist spin­ning art form like Willie Ro­driguez or Ganesh Ma­habir.

Al­ready our for­mer fast bowl­ing suc­cess sto­ry, Ian Bish­op, has pub­licly brought a rapid lev­el of im­prove­ment to Shan­non Gabriel and should be in­vit­ed to ex­change ideas with Ravi Ram­paul as well.

I have al­ways been aware of those who be­lieve that prac­tice makes per­fect. It ac­tu­al­ly does not. Prac­tice makes per­ma­nent, hence the rea­son why these young­sters should be dri­ven in­to cor­rect­ed form of their var­i­ous du­ties on the field.

The on­ly per­sons who iden­ti­fy with the need for lessons are the losers, be­cause they are re­mind­ed of the mis­takes which they in their quest to bat, bowl, or field.

I have cho­sen crick­et to­day, but our oth­er sports de­serve to have a sim­i­lar ap­proach to to­mor­row's im­proved per­for­mances and maybe we can take a close look at them all in due course.