ST. JOHN’S, An­tigua – Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) has in­tro­duced a rev­o­lu­tion­ary, da­ta-dri­ven scout­ing sys­tem de­signed to iden­ti­fy and nur­ture the finest crick­et­ing tal­ent across the Caribbean.

This am­bi­tious ini­tia­tive rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant trans­for­ma­tion in play­er eval­u­a­tion, with a struc­tured net­work of Se­nior Tal­ent Man­agers, Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Tal­ent Iden­ti­fiers (TTIDs), and re­gion­al scouts col­lab­o­rat­ing to pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive and an­a­lyt­i­cal ap­proach to tal­ent dis­cov­ery.

The on­go­ing West In­dies Cham­pi­onship, which will bowl off with Round 2 on Wednes­day, will serve as the first ma­jor plat­form for this sys­tem.

Un­der the lead­er­ship of CWI’s new­ly ap­point­ed Se­nior Tal­ent Man­agers, Ja­mal Smith (Male) and Ann Browne-John (Fe­male), the scout­ing sys­tem will fo­cus on man­ag­ing se­nior play­er da­ta, work­ing close­ly with an­a­lysts, and sup­port­ing se­lec­tion de­ci­sions.

They will be sup­port­ed by six TTIDs, each as­signed to a spe­cif­ic re­gion. Hen­der­son Broomes will work out of Bar­ba­dos, with Ramnaresh Sar­wan lead­ing that charge in Guyana.

For­mer Ja­maica open­ing bats­man Del­roy Mor­gan will han­dle mat­ters from Ja­maica, with the Lee­ward Is­lands’ Samuel Spencer do­ing du­ties from that side of the re­gion. Gibran Mo­hammed will work out of T&T with the Wind­ward Is­lands see­ing Craig Em­manuel han­dling mat­ters.

In ad­di­tion, four re­gion­al scouts, Fer­nix Thomas (Do­mini­ca), Sta­cy-Ann Adams (St. Vin­cent), An­tho­ny Gray (Trinidad & To­ba­go), and Shane Jef­fers (St. Kitts), will as­sist in eval­u­at­ing tal­ent dur­ing the West In­dies Cham­pi­onship.

CWI Di­rec­tor of Crick­et Miles Bas­combe em­pha­sized that this ini­tia­tive marks a ma­jor step for­ward in pro­fes­sion­al­is­ing tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“We are mov­ing be­yond sim­ply re­ly­ing on score­cards. This sys­tem en­sures that per­for­mances are as­sessed in con­text, with a fo­cus on skill sets, tac­ti­cal aware­ness, and game in­tel­li­gence. By col­lect­ing re­al-time da­ta and con­sis­tent­ly analysing per­for­mances, we can make more in­formed de­ci­sions about play­er de­vel­op­ment.”

Bas­combe high­light­ed that this sys­tem en­sures fair­ness and trans­paren­cy for all play­ers.

“Play­ers across the re­gion will now be eval­u­at­ed by mul­ti­ple tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion op­er­a­tives, re­sult­ing in more com­pre­hen­sive da­ta col­lec­tion and bal­anced as­sess­ments. With this ac­count­abil­i­ty frame­work in place, our scout­ing net­work en­sures that no tal­ent goes un­no­ticed.”

CMC