Maximising our sporting talent

IN A SHORT time, the Sunshine Girls will be leaving for the world championships of netball. They travel without one of our best and most inspirational players. From all reports, the netball administrators had done all that they should in order to avoid an incident of this sort happening. And yet it happened.

Apportioning blame is pointless. It is true that the administrators had done all that one could reasonably ask them to do. But we must now ask them, when the tournament is over, to revisit the situation and try to see if there is anything else that can be done in the future to ensure that something like this does not happen again.

I say this because I believe that one of the most important duties of a sports administration is to ensure that we get the best out of our talented sports personalities. Netball has been exemplary, so far, in this regard, and they must continue to show the way. They have done extremely well in unearthing and developing talent on a tiny budget, and have brought us to the pinnacle of world netball.

Our Caribbean cricket administrators lie at the opposite end of the scale. In the early days, whenever young talents came to the fore, they were recruited by English county (and other) teams and they went to that country and there honed their skills and developed the necessary work ethic. Nearly all of our players developed through this system. However, when we became world beaters and had trounced England herself a couple times, their administrators decided that enough was enough, and they shut the door on our young talent.

Ever since then, our administrators have been in a quandary. They have not a clue about how to take the talented youth, who come to the fore, and hone their skills and get them to develop the attitudes of the men of yesteryear. In those days, there was so much at stake, so much lay 'beyond the boundary' that, even though our administration was far worse then, our men knew that they carried the national and racial pride of the people of the Caribbean with them when they travelled. So they lifted us, undaunted by the treatment of the black players on the early teams and of those great players who had fallen out of favour.

a different world

The world is different now. The men no longer carry that burden. The only thing that has not changed is the ineptitude of those who administer the game. So we languish at the bottom of world tables, trying out every new talent and basking in their early success, but as soon as the more organised countries put that talented youngster under the microscope and discover his flaws and 'work him out', we drop him and look around for someone new, rather than mould him into a truly good player. One remembers that when they 'worked out' Lara, he had to almost coach himself into correcting the flaws in his batting.

Today, our administrators cannot even find a way to sit with the best players and negotiate how to get them to represent us while ensuring a good living for themselves.

The arguments about Gayle, Bravo and company revolve around the players' desire to maximise their earning potential from their talent and training. People question their loyalty and their nationalism when they focus on their earnings. It is as if we forget that playing the sport is their job, and the retirement age for sportsmen is very early! This is quite similar to what used to be said about our track athletes when they opted not to represent us in certain events in the past. Even recently, uncomplimentary comments were made about Kenia Sinclair's non-participation in the Commonwealth Games. But our athletes now decide in which events they wish to compete at international meets, and in which meets they will participate. Administrators have learnt that they can't force them to do otherwise. They pick the team from those available.

Nutten nuh wrong wid dat!

Keith Noel is an educator. Send comments to columns@gleanerjm.com.