Look­ing at West In­dies crick­et from Tests to One Day­ers to T20, I can re­call some in­ter­est­ing quotes on the vi­a­bil­i­ty and suc­cess in plan­ning a busi­ness strat­e­gy or op­er­a­tion. Dig deep to see if any, some, all or none ap­ply to West In­dies crick­et fol­low­ing the third white­wash in a row (3-0 to Eng­land in One Day­ers and T20s, fol­lowed by last week’s 27 all out part of an­oth­er 3-0 an­ni­hi­la­tion this time by Aus­tralia in Tests).

Read the fol­low­ing quotes and iden­ti­fy which one may or may not ap­ply to West In­di­an crick­et, from ad­min­is­tra­tion, to coach­es, to se­lec­tors, to grounds­men, to play­ers, to fans, to spon­sors and fi­nal­ly to politi­cians; we all blame each oth­er.

Vi­sion with­out a strat­e­gy re­mains an il­lu­sion. –Lee Bol­man

The essence of strat­e­gy is choos­ing what not to do. –Michael Porter

You can­not be every­thing to every­one. If you de­cide to go north, you can­not go south at the same time. –Jeroen De Flan­der

Strat­e­gy with­out process is lit­tle more than a wish list. – Robert Filek

Strat­e­gy is about mak­ing choic­es, trade-offs; it’s about de­lib­er­ate­ly choos­ing to be dif­fer­ent. –Michael Porter

Hope is not a strat­e­gy. – Vince Lom­bar­di

In re­al­i­ty strat­e­gy is ac­tu­al­ly very straight­for­ward. You pick a gen­er­al di­rec­tion and im­ple­ment like hell. –Jack Welch

There’s on­ly one growth strat­e­gy: work hard. –William Hague

How­ev­er beau­ti­ful the strat­e­gy, you should oc­ca­sion­al­ly look at the re­sults. –Sir Win­ston

Fail­ure is noth­ing more than a chance to re­vise your strat­e­gy. –Anony­mous

When one ex­am­ines the above quo­ta­tions, the last three above, stand out in West In­dies crick­et at the mo­ment.

There it is, and I be­lieve it ex­plains clear­ly the strat­e­gy of Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) by adapt­ing all of the above to our cur­rent predica­ment, which has not arisen overnight but cer­tain­ly has been en­hanced by the re­cent ac­tions of a few, and the im­plod­ing re­sults have added fu­el to a burn­ing flame brought on by short­sight­ed­ness.

So let us ex­am­ine com­pre­hen­sive­ly what has tran­spired, and for that to be fair, I be­lieve that all par­ties need to be held ac­count­able, not on­ly CWI Man­age­ment and the likes of Daren Sam­my and his coach­ing staff, but what about the oth­ers all re­vealed in Feb­ru­ary by the Di­rec­tor of Crick­et Op­er­a­tions, Miles Bas­combe.

So, on Feb­ru­ary 3, 2025 at 2.05 pm, CWI is­sued a press re­lease head­lined - “Crick­et West In­dies launch­es bold new scout­ing sys­tem with fo­cus on West In­dies Cham­pi­onships”.

And for me, here­in lies the seeds of dis­con­tent and rais­ing of sev­er­al red flags.

The fol­low­ing is from the press re­lease: Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) has un­veiled a ground­break­ing, da­ta-dri­ven scout­ing sys­tem aimed at iden­ti­fy­ing and de­vel­op­ing the best crick­et­ing tal­ent across the re­gion.

This new ini­tia­tive marks a ma­jor shift in play­er as­sess­ment with Se­nior Tal­ent Man­agers, Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Tal­ent Iden­ti­fiers (TTIDs), and a net­work of scouts now work­ing to­geth­er to pro­vide a struc­tured, an­a­lyt­i­cal ap­proach to tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

With the West In­dies Cham­pi­onship as their first ma­jor as­sign­ment, the scout­ing team will en­sure that every per­for­mance is tracked, analysed, and re­port­ed, cre­at­ing a clear path­way for emerg­ing crick­eters to progress to the high­est lev­els.

A Mod­ernised Scout­ing Net­work

Through CWI’s re­cent­ly ap­point­ed Se­nior Tal­ent Man­agers, Ja­mal Smith (Male) and Ann Browne-John (Fe­male), there will now be a ded­i­cat­ed and ro­bust re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for man­ag­ing se­nior play­er da­ta, col­lab­o­rat­ing with an­a­lysts, and as­sist­ing in se­lec­tion de­ci­sions. They will work along­side six TTIDs, each as­signed to a spe­cif­ic re­gion:

Bar­ba­dos – Hen­der­son Broomes; Guyana – Ramnaresh Sar­wan; Ja­maica – Del­roy Mor­gan; Lee­ward Is­lands – Samuel Spencer; Trinidad & To­ba­go – Gibran Mo­hammed; Wind­ward Is­lands – Craig Em­manuel.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, 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.

Ac­cord­ing to CWI Di­rec­tor of Crick­et Miles Bas­combe, this ini­tia­tive rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant step to­ward pro­fes­sion­al­is­ing tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“We are mov­ing be­yond just re­ly­ing on what we see on score­cards. This sys­tem en­sures that per­for­mances are seen with con­text and with a fo­cus on the skill sets dis­played, tac­ti­cal acu­men and game aware­ness. We are col­lect­ing re­al-time da­ta, analysing per­for­mances con­sis­tent­ly, and mak­ing in­formed de­ci­sions about play­er de­vel­op­ment,” said Bas­combe.

Da­ta-Dri­ven Tal­ent Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion

A ma­jor fea­ture of this new scout­ing ap­proach is its re­liance on ad­vanced an­a­lyt­ics. Tal­ent scouts will use the Ath­lete Man­age­ment Sys­tem (AMS) to main­tain play­er depth charts, sub­mit per­for­mance re­ports, and track play­er pro­gres­sion.

Key re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of TTIDs in­clude: Scout­ing & Eval­u­a­tion – At­tend­ing match­es and train­ing ses­sions to as­sess play­ers’ tech­ni­cal skills, phys­i­cal at­trib­ut­es, and men­tal strength; Re­port­ing & Analy­sis – Com­pil­ing de­tailed scout­ing re­ports and main­tain­ing play­er per­for­mance records; Col­lab­o­ra­tion – Work­ing close­ly with coach­es, se­lec­tors, and high-per­for­mance staff to re­fine the de­vel­op­ment path­way.

Bas­combe em­pha­sized that this new sys­tem pro­vides a fair and trans­par­ent struc­ture for all play­ers.

“Play­ers in the re­gion will now be seen and eval­u­at­ed by mul­ti­ple tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion op­er­a­tives, re­sult­ing in more in­for­ma­tion gath­er­ing and bet­ter-bal­anced da­ta on per­for­mances. With this ac­count­abil­i­ty met­ric in place, our net­work of scouts en­sures that no tal­ent goes un­no­ticed.”

He fur­ther called on all stake­hold­ers in West In­dies crick­et to sup­port this new da­ta-dri­ven ap­proach. “We are mov­ing in­to a new era of role-based, da­ta-dri­ven se­lec­tion that will have rip­ple ef­fects across our crick­et sys­tem from the way play­ers pre­pare to the way we mea­sure per­for­mances. In ad­di­tion, it al­lows us to ex­am­ine deficits in play­ers and to op­ti­mise through our high-per­for­mance frame­work. How­ev­er, I would like to re­it­er­ate that da­ta-dri­ven does not on­ly equate to stats-based; huge em­pha­sis will be placed on qual­i­ta­tive da­ta. Be­yond se­lec­tion, this da­ta will be used to re­fine play­er pro­gram­ming, en­sur­ing a tar­get­ed ap­proach to get­ting play­ers in­ter­na­tion­al-ready.”

How­ev­er, when all was said and done, af­ter the Four Day Re­gion­al Cham­pi­onships, the da­ta which out­lined the facts as it re­lates to -Most runs, most cen­turies or best av­er­ages over the course of the tour­na­ment ap­pear not to have found favour when it was time to se­lect the Test team for Aus­tralia or in some cas­es pri­or to that for the “A” team match­es.

So even as we all at­tack CWI and jus­ti­fi­ably so, and in par­tic­u­lar Dr Kishore Swal­low, Bas­combe, Daren Sam­my and his coach­es, what of the work of the oth­ers list­ed above from Se­nior Team Man­agers (2 per­sons), Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Tal­ent Iden­ti­fiers (6 per­sons) and Scouts (four per­sons)?

That, dear read­ers, is a lot of per­sons who would have been paid to per­form a task, which many can now ques­tion whether it was the right strat­e­gy based on re­sults, so we need to ask for their ac­count­abil­i­ty as well if we are to be fair to this PROCESS. So we are al­so stat­ing that all of these per­sons al­so got it wrong, and were not able to steer CWI in the right di­rec­tion, de­spite the fact that some of them like to talk a lot of crick­ets.

I was told by one of my friends that none of the above con­sist­ed of Sir Clive Lloyd, Sir Vi­vian Richards, Bri­an Lara, Michael Hold­ing, Andy Roberts, Lawrence Rowe, Joel Gar­ner, Curt­ly Am­brose, Lar­ry Gomes, Gor­don Greenidge and Desmond Haynes, just to name a few of our leg­endary play­ers.

Where does CWI go from here? Hope­ful­ly, those in pow­er will lis­ten and make im­me­di­ate changes and re­vise this en­tire fail­ing sys­tem and make changes in the best in­ter­est of West In­dies crick­et, both per­son­nel and in terms of the STRAT­E­GY that has FAILED.