KINGSTON, Ja­maica – For­mer West In­dies crick­eters Jim­my Adams and Kier­an Pow­ell are both of the opin­ion that there are not enough high-qual­i­ty coach­es in the Caribbean at the lo­cal and re­gion­al lev­els.

Their com­ments have come in the wake of the re­gion­al side’s thrash­ing at the hands of Aus­tralia in their re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Test and T20I se­ries, which the vis­i­tors dom­i­nat­ed 3-0 and 5-0 re­spec­tive­ly.

Speak­ing ear­li­er this week on the Ma­son and Guest ra­dio show, Adams, who for­mer­ly served as Di­rec­tor of Crick­et at Crick­et West In­dies (CWI), said there need­ed to be ma­jor in­vest­ment at the youth lev­el, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­tween the ages of 12 and 13.

The for­mer West In­dies cap­tain, who played 54 Tests and 127 ODIs, al­so called for bet­ter coach­es across the re­gion.

“I’m think­ing that in about five to six years, we will have a re­al­ly good youth team and some re­al­ly po­ten­tial­ly good play­ers.

“We need to in­vest at the low­er lev­els. We need to in­vest in a se­ri­ous way at the low­er lev­els and we need to find good lo­cal coach­es be­cause from what I’m see­ing, they don’t seem to be very many. If not, we have to go and look out­side and we have to use in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices to de­vel­op our play­ers,” Adams said.

“It’s go­ing to take mon­ey; it’s go­ing to take an in­vest­ment. It’s not go­ing to take more com­pe­ti­tions, which is what has been go­ing on. It’s go­ing to take a se­ri­ous, fun­da­men­tal in­vest­ment ei­ther re­gion­al­ly, or we’re go­ing to have to find a base where we can have these young­sters over an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od.”

Mean­while, Pow­ell, who played 44 Tests and 46 ODIs for the West In­dies, said he be­lieved the re­gion­al team was strug­gling be­cause the coach­es were not ad­e­quate­ly pre­pared to im­prove the play­ers.

“I think what Jef­frey is say­ing is noth­ing that any oth­er past crick­eter wouldn’t have said, but I don’t think that our voic­es are par­tic­u­lar­ly wel­comed.

“I think an in­vest­ment in­to the youth struc­ture, es­pe­cial­ly the types of coach­es, be­cause I per­son­al­ly think that the coach­es at the re­gion­al set­up right now are just not ex­posed enough or equipped suf­fi­cient­ly enough to de­vel­op play­ers,” Pow­ell said.

CMC