Vin­ode Mam­chan

?An emo­tion­al Sir Gary Sobers says that the West In­dies don't pro­duce crick­eters like him any­more and that Twen­ty20 (T20) crick­et is killing the team.

Sobers made the com­ments dur­ing a press con­fer­ence to un­veil the Sobers/Tis­sera Tro­phy for the cur­rent Test se­ries that is be­ing played by the West In­dies and Sri Lan­ka.

The Bar­ba­di­an took cen­tre stage at the Taj Samu­dra in Colom­bo and an­swered vary­ing ques­tions that came from the many re­porters on hand to cov­er the event.

He said that when he played crick­et it was for the West In­dies but sad­ly that is not the case with crick­eters of to­day.

"I nev­er scored a run for my­self, I scored every run for the West In­dies. I val­ued what it was like play­ing for the West In­dies and for me it was all about the West In­dies. Now I feel the play­ers play for the West In­dies with the hope of do­ing well to at­tract the IPL (In­di­an Pre­mier League) and then they are gone. Once this con­tin­ues we will nev­er have a great side like what we had in the 1980s and 90s. We had a team that was world cham­pi­on for 15 years and that is not like­ly to hap­pen again in the sport.

"The West In­dies while we were win­ning we were prob­a­bly lazy in putting things in place to sus­tain what was hap­pen­ing. To­day when you look at the team you can see that the crick­eters we have pro­duced for the last 10 years can­not come close to what we pro­duced in that win­ning era.

"To­day's play­ers seem to be pre­oc­cu­pied with the T20s and this (is) af­fect­ing West In­dies crick­et the most in my view. When you look around the world, you see play­ers from Sri Lan­ka, from South Africa, New Zealand and places like Aus­tralia play­ing with such en­thu­si­asm. You are not see­ing that from our crick­eters and while some teams like West In­dies and Sri Lan­ka are in a re­ces­sion, I am sure Sri Lan­ka would come out of it quick­er than us. In fact by win­ning the first game they are al­ready point­ing in the right di­rec­tion. We are very far away from be­com­ing the force we once were."

Sobers added that he un­der­stands the po­si­tion that the play­ers find them­selves in but he thinks they need to bal­ance it.

"Many of our crick­eters come from hum­ble back­grounds, so when they get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make mon­ey and help their fam­i­lies they will do it. You can't get up­set with them for that but I al­ways say that I wish they can bal­ance it and give ser­vice to their coun­try as well."

Sobers will be at the sec­ond Test match at the P Sara Oval to­day and will be there at the end al­so to present the tro­phy.