Well spoken, Andy Roberts

ON THE BOUNDARY With Tony Becca

I first met Andy Roberts during the third Test match between the West Indies and England at Kensington Oval in 1974. It was his first Test match, and it was the Test match in which Lawrence Rowe stroked his way past 302 runs in a memorable innings.

I did not know at the time that we were destined to become good friends. He became a great fast bowler, he loved cricket, he knew cricket inside out, and we spent a lot of time together discussing the intricacies of the game.

When Roberts stopped playing the game, he cared for the pitch at the Antigua Recreation Ground, he coached the West Indies team, he was the president of the Antigua Cricket Board, he served as a West Indies selector, and he was on the West Indies Cricket Board's cricket committee.

I have not seen Roberts for some four years now but I knew he was still interested in West Indies cricket. After all, he was an outstanding servant of West Indies cricket, playing in 47 Test matches while taking 202 wickets at an average of 25.61.

Damaging cricket

He confirmed his interest when he came out in a recent interview with CricInfo, swinging left, right, and centre, bowling yorkers and bouncers at the West Indies Cricket Board and calling on its members to resign.

Roberts, leader of the feared quartet of fast bowlers during the West Indies dominance of world cricket and a member of arguably the greatest cricket team of all time, called on the members to resign because they are damaging cricket in the region.

"The board does what it pleases them. They don't have a clue how to move West Indies cricket forward. Some of the board members should resign otherwise the same problems will keep appearing in the future also."

Roberts, an aggressive fast bowler in his time, made it clear who he thought should go. "Both Hunte and Hilaire should go. Some of the top people in the board should resign. We need a different approach."

Roberts warned that the new direction as announced by Ernest Hilaire could put West Indies in worse problems in 15 years to come than in the 15 years just gone because the board is focusing on a few players, on the few players at the top, on the West Indies team rather than on the entire cricket in the West Indies.

And this is why I welcome Andy Roberts' intervention. He has hit the nail on the head, which I have been trying to do for years now.

For years now, I have been telling whoever will listen that club cricket is the foundation of West Indies cricket, that it is what nurtures the development of cricket and cricketers, that it is dying, and that if we allow it to die, West Indies cricket will follow shortly.

Once upon a time, club cricket was good cricket, and cricketers wanted to be a part of it.

Today, that is not so. Today, especially in Jamaica, club cricket is poor, and the clubs are dying, mainly due to that and to the lack of money.

Lack of talent

The clubs teams are filled with young boys and most of them, who are no great shakes, who are far from being outstanding schoolboy players, walk into most club teams today believing they are good, some of them harbouring thoughts of representing Jamaica, even the West Indies, and behaving as if they should.

Today, members of the Jamaica Cricket Association seem to pride themselves that the senior cricket competition is just starting, in May, and that the competition, which once involved eight teams in a return format with each one playing 14 matches starting in January, now involve 22 teams divided into four groups with each team playing each other once, and with the winners of each group meeting in the semi-finals.

Apart from too many teams playing in the top competition in such a small country, that means that 10 of the teams will play only four matches each for the season with the other 12 playing five each before the winners of each group meet in the semi-finals and the two winners in the final.

In Jamaica, the hope is that first-class and Test players will be developed with each club playing four and five matches a season and will improve their skills playing a short season. Either that or the plan is to play a whole string of practice matches called trial matches which will neither build the clubs nor develop the cricketers.

In this day of competition, practice matches or trial matches is a waste of time, and it is so because it lacks the different kinds of pitches that develop batsmen and bowlers, it lacks the state of the game situation that brings out the best in a batsman, or bowler, and it lacks the atmosphere and the competitive spirit that is club cricket, or was club cricket.

Andy Roberts said it nicely: cricket has changed in a lot of ways, and he knows that is has changed.

To play cricket, good cricket, however, Roberts also said, you have to bat often if you are to become a good batsman. You have to bowl often if you are to become a good bowler, and if you intend to field properly, or brilliantly, you must spend a lot of time doing fielding drills.

You have to pay cricket, serious cricket, for days, for weeks, for months, for years to become a good cricketer.

On top of that, and as far as I know, you cannot build a team to beat the world by trying to develop 11 players, by taking them aside to play together, by bowling and batting, mostly in the nets, against each other day after day, by listening to the same man day after day, and by looking at the same film, the same blackboard, everyday.

You need to have a broad base of good cricketers, you to need to train and practise, you need to be motivated, you need a good, long competition which offers cricketers of different styles, varying conditions and situations, and finally, a base of good first-class cricketers before you can begin to look at a world-class Test team.

No one can build a house from the top. It has never been done. It must have a foundation.