(Trinidad Guardian) Former West Indies batting legend and captain Brian Lara says that the cricket infrastructure in the Caribbean is terrible and it will take between five to ten years to bring the sport back up to a top level in the region again. Lara was speaking at the Caribbean Tourism Organisation at World Travel Market in London, where he is part of a contingent selling T&T as a tourist destination. “Yes, still a very long way to go. I would not have been surprised if we won this game, because I know what we are capable of—sporadic, good sporadic performances, one here, one next year. But in terms of consistency, West Indies lack that, and that is not something that you regain overnight. I think our infrastructure is terrible. Administratively, we have got it wrong on many occasions.
“Our player-board relationship has gone wrong for many years, gone sour, and we need to improve these things, fix it, set a base, get the infrastructure in, and then think about five, ten years down the line. So it might be a dismal outlook, but if we keep just trying to put a plaster on every sore that we have, it’s not going to work. “ So I hope one day somebody’s going to take it up and really get things going.” Lara continued: “As I said, on any given day, I think we’ve got the best talented cricketers in the world. It’s always been the case over the years, since even before my days. Cricket has gone a long way now. Talent is only a very small part compared to 20, 30 years ago, when it was a major part—your physical fitness, your talent played a bigger role.
Now (with) technology, there is a lot of things coming into play, and I say it all the time—we in the West Indies take very good talent and make it average, and people like Australia and England and India, take average talent, and make it very, very good, and that is where the problem lies.” Lara also gave his opinion on the current match fixing crisis saying: “It is unfortunate. Hopefully it can be a catalyst for total eradication of the problem, because this is a serious result for such a thing. Hopefully it is the last, as I said the catalyst to move to better things and to really clean up the game.”
