Cricket West Indies (CWI) recently took a significant step in strengthening talent identification and player development with a specialized workshop in Trinidad, conducted during the West Indies Breakout League. Over three days, from May 8-10, CWI’s network of Territorial Talent Identifiers engaged in comprehensive sessions aimed at enhancing their alignment with the senior men’s team environment.
The workshop, led by Director of Cricket Miles Bascombe, brought together six talent identifiers from across the Caribbean, along with key High Performance and coaching personnel. They worked alongside Head Coach Daren Sammy, High-Performance Manager Dwain Gill, Senior Talent Manager Jamal Smith, and Performance Analyst Avenesh Seetaram.
Sammy hailed the initiative as a crucial step in ensuring regional talent identification mirrors the standards of international cricket. “It’s a great initiative brought on by CWI with all the talent IDs that we have around the region, with the intention to provide context and guidance to this instrumental group,” Sammy explained. He emphasized the importance of providing talent scouts with insights into the highest levels of the game, including data collection and player roles within different formats. “The processes we go through, the data that is collected, and how those translate to filling the respective personnel roles in the various teams.” His hope is that talent identifiers can take these lessons back to their home territories and elevate the level of player development in line with West Indies’ strategic vision.
Bascombe outlined the key objective of the workshop, stressing the need for talent identifiers to understand selection processes and contribute to the creation of a standardized player assessment model. “The workshop’s main objective is to ensure that the Territorial Talent Identifiers know the processes that drive selection and, by extension, talent identification and development,” he said. “We also took the opportunity to align the depth charting process and gather their input on creating a standardized player assessment model to be implemented system-wide. The input and feedback from the group was extremely valuable and provided a foundation for continuous collaboration.”
Sammy further underscored the role of talent identifiers in West Indies’ mission to reclaim its dominance on the international stage. “With the expertise of Jamal Smith and Avenesh Seetaram, we showed the talent IDs what is required to be on par with the rest of the world, as well as explaining the brand of cricket we want to play and how we will use the regional level as the starting point to plot our way to the summit of international cricket yet again.”
The six Territorial Talent Identifiers present at the workshop were:
– Henderson Broomes (Barbados)
– Ramnaresh Sarwan (Guyana)
– Delroy Morgan (Jamaica)
– Samuel Spencer (Leeward Islands)
– Gibran Mohammed (Trinidad & Tobago)
– Craig Emmanuel (Windward Islands)
Goodluck with that!!! The current generation of youngsters are chronically allergic to sunlight and the outdoors in general, choosing to attach themselves to the video game console instead.
These days, one is hard pressed to find them playing pickup cricket on the savannahs or any other flat dirt or grass surface. While they are astute at digitally finding and eliminating every video game villain, they have little or no desire to search and retrieve a cricket ball gone missing in the bushes.
In a nutshell, you cannot teach passion for cricket or any other sport. It is very ironic that generations of Dominican cricketers played the game with passion and aplomb but were never scouted for development. Now the Windies Brass (God bless them) are committed towards the discovery and nurturing of promising youngsters. I wish them the best.
To cricket West Indies.
People in the Breakout League are already in their mid 20’s…Talent has to be identified at the Under 15 league, so that by age 18years, we have at least one or two guys on our test team. At what age did Sir Gary played his first test? Was it 17 or 18 years? Batting prodigy Brian Charles Lara (the greatest we have produced), also played very early.
It’s a shame that we have had recently 2 of our young bowlers being called for suspect action in our domestic competition. What are our coaches doing? Are they being paid? Why can’t they pick this out early enough and have the young bowlers change their action while they are still under 19 years? It baffles me. Changing ones bowling action late in his career has never worked out well. Our coaches need to do better.