Have you no­ticed that Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) has been mak­ing head­lines late­ly in­form­ing us of cer­tain de­tails re­gard­ing their gov­er­nance and at­tempts to un­earth new tal­ent? It's about time! Af­ter decades of stum­bling around like a bats­man fac­ing a bounc­er, they seem to be fi­nal­ly wak­ing up.

I saw a pho­to of the new CEO Chris Dehring with the pres­i­dent of CWI Dr Kishore Shal­low tak­ing up his po­si­tion from Feb­ru­ary 1 which is good news. Like with any po­si­tion and with any in­di­vid­ual, there will be de­trac­tors. As I said in one of the pre­vi­ous columns, I met and had many in­ter­ac­tions with Dehring years ago and to be hon­est, they have all been pos­i­tive.

How­ev­er, I could un­der­stand there may be oth­er per­sons out there who have not had a sim­i­lar type of in­ter­ac­tion and that's fine, as we all have dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ences with in­di­vid­u­als. All I can hope for is that Dehring does things his way. Of course, he will be un­der an in­tense spot­light from the CWI ex­ec­u­tive, but I can just hope he is strong, will not be bul­lied by the ex­ec­u­tive and does what is right for West In­dies crick­et. I'll re­serve judge­ment un­til he nav­i­gates the treach­er­ous wa­ters of CWI pol­i­tics.

Some oth­er in­ter­est­ing news is the at­tempt to put in place a new scout­ing sys­tem that will re­ly heav­i­ly on da­ta to be used to un­earth new crick­et­ing tal­ent in the re­gion. So, through CWI’s Se­nior Tal­ent Man­agers, there will be a ded­i­cat­ed and ro­bust re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for man­ag­ing se­nior play­er da­ta, col­lab­o­rat­ing with an­a­lysts and as­sist­ing in se­lec­tion de­ci­sions. They will work with six Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Tal­ent Iden­ti­fiers (TTIDs) and a net­work of scouts to pro­vide a struc­tured an­a­lyt­i­cal ap­proach. Sounds im­pres­sive, right?

The new fo­cus on da­ta-dri­ven tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is a breath of fresh air. Af­ter 30 years of de­cline, this is one of the an­swers to West In­dies crick­et. For years, West In­dies se­lec­tion has been more about who you know than what you know and how well you do it. It's like they were pick­ing teams based on a horo­scope in­stead of per­for­mance.

They have been se­lect­ing the wrong play­ers all of this time but this new sys­tem, ac­cord­ing to Miles Bas­combe (CWI Di­rec­tor of Crick­et), will rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant step to­wards pro­fes­sion­al­is­ing tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. He went on to state that CWI is mov­ing be­yond just re­ly­ing on what is on score­cards, but let's be hon­est, score­cards still mat­ter, right? Is it that the da­ta is go­ing to be hand­ed to the lone se­lec­tor and from that he will de­cide if play­er A or play­er B should be se­lect­ed?

Lis­ten, it is ridicu­lous that the West In­dies has one se­lec­tor, but they have now moved from one se­lec­tor to two Se­nior Tal­ent man­agers, six TTIDs, and four re­gion­al scouts, with every­one as­sist­ing in eval­u­at­ing and scout­ing for tal­ent dur­ing the West In­dies Cham­pi­onships. It’s a pity Hol­ly Be­taudi­er is no longer with us; he could have helped.

How come the big three - Aus­tralia, Eng­land and In­dia - each have a pan­el of around three to five crick­et se­lec­tors with a des­ig­nat­ed chair­man lead­ing the se­lec­tion process? In Oc­to­ber 2024, the Pak­istan Crick­et Board re­vamped its se­lec­tion com­mit­tee, re­duc­ing the size from sev­en to just five mem­bers. Maybe I am wrong, but the re­cruit­ment/scout­ing sys­tem CWI has just come up with, has not been im­ple­ment­ed in any oth­er crick­et­ing na­tion.

An "army" of tal­ent scouts; six TTIDs, four re­gion­al scouts, and two Se­nior Tal­ent Man­agers - it sounds more like a re­al­i­ty TV show than a se­lec­tion process. Just have a few ex­pe­ri­enced se­lec­tors, let them trav­el the re­gion, watch the games, and to­geth­er with the coach and the cap­tain, pick the best play­ers. It's not rock­et sci­ence, folks! Let the se­lec­tors move around to each venue and choose the tal­ent pool from that.

Sure­ly, look­ing at the play­ers and sum­maris­ing their scores is good enough to be able to se­lect teams. Maybe I am wrong, but how were Desmond Haynes, Lar­ry Gomes, Mal­colm Mar­shall etc dis­cov­ered? Maybe there were se­cre­tive TTIDs that no one knew about. I re­mem­ber when I used to see the late Joey Carew at the var­i­ous venues dur­ing the re­gion­al cham­pi­onships, look­ing at the re­gion­al play­ers vy­ing for se­lec­tion and scout­ing for tal­ent. You could have seen the var­i­ous se­lec­tors at all the venues look­ing at play­ers and to­geth­er with the cap­tain and coach, they se­lect­ed the teams.

What has come out of the Cari­com Re­gion­al Crick­et Con­fer­ence held right here at the Hy­att in April 2024? The Con­fer­ence, while well-in­ten­tioned, seems to have pro­duced more re­ports than runs. I know the man­date was to im­prove the sport’s man­age­r­i­al struc­ture and en­sure the best re­gion­al play­ers are al­ways se­lect­ed for in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments. Maybe this is CWI's an­swer to en­sure the best re­gion­al play­ers are al­ways se­lect­ed.

I al­so not­ed that CWI passed his­toric gov­er­nance re­form at a spe­cial meet­ing of the share­hold­ers. In­ter­est­ing­ly, they have in­creased the term of the pres­i­dent and vice pres­i­dent from two years to three, with a max­i­mum of three terms, and this change will take ef­fect from the next elec­tion in March 2025. The pres­i­dent in a re­lease stat­ed this is not just re­form, it is a nec­es­sary trans­for­ma­tion that will en­sure CWI is led with in­tegri­ty, vi­sion and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

I re­al­ly hope so and I do hope the good Lord spares my life for a few more years to see that. While CWI's gov­er­nance re­forms are a step in the right di­rec­tion, let's not get car­ried away. In­creas­ing the pres­i­dent's term to three years might just give them more time to dig them­selves in­to a deep­er hole. And the em­pha­sis on "in­tegri­ty, vi­sion, and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty" sounds great, but ac­tions speak loud­er than words.

Fi­nal­ly, I am over­joyed that the We­h­by re­port may have been tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion af­ter gath­er­ing dust for far too long. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, space does not per­mit me to go in­to de­tail about some of the gov­er­nance changes aimed at im­prov­ing the struc­ture and ef­fi­cien­cy, but here are some of the key points:

● Board and Lead­er­ship Struc­ture — the in­tro­duc­tion of more fe­male in­de­pen­dent di­rec­tors. Great news and hope­ful­ly they will have ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in crick­et.

● Re­duc­tion in the num­ber and size of com­mit­tees — I won­der if that would elim­i­nate friends and ac­quain­tances who can do favours for ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers.

● Eth­i­cal and Com­pli­ance mea­sures — Pub­lic re­lease of an­nu­al au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments en­sur­ing trans­paren­cy. Great news and long over­due!

● Fi­nan­cial Over­sight and Risk Man­age­ment—Es­tab­lish­ment of an Au­dit, Risk and Com­pli­ance Com­mit­tee to en­hance over­sight and trans­paren­cy. Ex­trav­a­gant news!

● Gen­der Equal­i­ty and Women’s Crick­et De­vel­op­ment — All the points re­gard­ing the pro­gres­sion of women's crick­et are long over­due.

CWI has to in­vest more in women’s crick­et as the West In­dies are get­ting left be­hind. Some­where, some­how, they need to iden­ti­fy more Hay­ley Matthews and De­an­dra Dot­tins of the re­gion. West In­dies Women's Crick­et has the po­ten­tial to be a pow­er­house, but it needs more in­vest­ment and sup­port. Let's not just talk about gen­der equal­i­ty; let's ac­tu­al­ly de­liv­er on it.

So, CWI, you've tak­en some ba­by steps. Now it's time to start run­ning. Don't let us down again. Time for talk is done, it's now time for ac­tion but don’t hold your breath, folks.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.