By Tony Cozier
The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) made its draft strategic plan public last week. It is a weighty document, full of grandiose plans and expectations – and good intentions.
It is, president Julian Hunte stated in his foreword, “intended to elucidate and operationalise our vision of the future, a future in which the West Indies will once more be a major, if not the dominant, force in world cricket”.
“The one thing the plan recognises is that we need the support and active participation of all sectors of Caribbean society if we are to succeed in restoring the pride in our cricket,” he added.
The president must know that all with the well-being of West Indian close to their hearts shares such hopes. But the WICB won’t get “the support and active participation of all sectors of the Caribbean society” if the functionaries employed to administer the plan continue to embarrass West Indies cricket with their repeated gaffes.
If they cannot get team shirts with the correct spelling of their players’ names, or any name at all, on the back, fail to raise an eleven to fulfil a scheduled fixture against the visiting international team, cause play to be delayed in a One-Day International for lack of a computer with the details of the essential Duckworth-Lewis system and fluff any one of the dozens of their simple chores as they have done in recent years, how can they be expected to manage a programme of development the strategic plan estimates will cost US$138 million over the next five years.
