Inadequate facilities, skill deficiencies among main reasons for West Indies decline, says Dehring

Cricket West Indies’ (CWI) chief executive officer, Chris Dehring has revealed that while “around 100” issues had been identified as the reasons behind the decline in West Indies cricket, insufficient facilities, skill deficiencies in players and the quality of domestic competitions were among some of the main causes.

He made the revelation during a press conference on Monday, following the conclusion of a two-day emergency meeting called by CWI president Dr Kishore Shallow aimed at addressing critical challenges facing West Indies cricket and formulating immediate structural reforms.

The meeting, held on Sunday and Monday, brought together the Cricket Strategy & Officiating Committee along with former West Indies players Dr Desmond Haynes, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ian Bradshaw, special invitees Sir Clive Lloyd, Sir Brian Lara and Sir Vivian Richards.

West Indies head coach Daren Sammy, white-ball and Test captains Shai Hope and Roston Chase respectively, along with Dehring and Director of Cricket Miles Bascombe were also present.

During the question and answer segment, Dehring was asked if any particular areas had been identified that needed urgent attention.

He maintained, though, that many of the problems identified were systemic in nature.

“Well I think over the last two days we identified a list of maybe about 100 things that we have to improve.

“But probably amongst the top five was facilities for the development of our cricketers. We’re talking about things like facilities at every level for the development of our cricketers, proper practice pitches across the region, the quality of our domestic tournaments would have been highlighted,” Dehring said.

“There’s definitely a skills deficiency at various levels that really don’t get highlighted until they reach international level and then you see the glaring deficiencies vis a vis our international counterparts, which again is systemic, because it is very difficult as a batting coach to change habits when you’re getting somebody who has made so many runs at the regional level, but clearly has deficiencies when it comes to the international level…so we have to try and address the issues that we’re facing much earlier from a technical development perspective.

“There are also issues surrounding strength and conditioning, which again points back to facilities that are available to our youngsters and our emerging players. So those will be some of the highlights which would have been pointed out…” he further pointed out.

However, Dehring said several suggestions had also been put forward by various stakeholders to address those problems.

Among them he said, was the establishment of a functioning High Performance Centre as well as Academies across the region.

“Solutions would have included things like making sure we have a proper High Performance Centre established in the region. Hopefully that’s just a prototype that will be then modelled and imitated across the region and in other countries.

“Academy systems to make sure that the West Indies way of playing cricket is both documented and taught from very early, so that you’re getting people who have been engrained in the West Indies cricket way long before they reach international level, throughout Under-15s, Under-17s, Under-19s and so on,” Dehring said.

CMC