Sir Vivian Richard joined the Mason and Guest program on the Voice of Barbados on Tuesday evening and lamented the results of the current West Indies team.
The “Master Blaster” decried the lack of mentorship for regional players who were able to tap into the organizational knowledge and experience of captain Clive Lloyd and his (Richards’) era of winning leadership.
“It hurts (to see the results of the present day WI team). There are times you hear people speak about the fact that sometimes the older players are not interested in what is going on. We care because certainly there was a foundation before we started our success process and we followed from the mentoring that we had earlier and the inspiration that we had then.”
In addition, he stated,
“I am not sure the administration is in a place to start passing these things on. What I found is that we encircled ourselves with a set of guys who didn’t make it… It is of serious importance for us to start getting our act together.”
He also said that he is an eternal optimist and will never give up hope of returning to the good old days of Windies. But he said that all stakeholders should come together and pool their collective resources for the benefit of the younger generation going forward.
Commenting further, the former West Indies great says that the foundation of cricket does not come from the T20 stage but the red ball is the highest level.
“Guys are looking for the easy way out because the red ball could be dangerous to one’s profession… The ball moves around much more than the white, that is why you find some guys would gravitate to white ball cricket.”
“But the foundation of cricket comes not from the T20 stages, but the red ball form the highest level.”
In addition, he explained that several top T20 players had strong performances in the longer format of the game.
“Nothing seems to be working at present because we are not getting the results that we expected from all the various aspects that were put in place. We have had all these professional coaches. We have gone through a fair bit and we have not seen the results.”
“Where do we go from here?” he asked rhetorically.
“It is what goes on upstairs mentally, and I think that is fairly lacking, where West Indies is concerned. We lack belief and sometimes you can drill belief into certain individuals. I think West Indies cricket hasn’t utilised individuals who are good enough where these particular factors are concerned.”