To understand more about the decline of WI cricket we need to understand how it rose up to what it was and why.

WI dominated cricket under what I will just call the older or amateur cricket. I do not intend to suggest the players around the world were amateurs or amateurish but it is just a name.

Under this system you waited until a genius came along. If your team did not have a Bradman, Headley, Sobers, Botham etc.. then you just did the best you could.

There was no development on the level of what we have now. Problems arise because you really just cant find talent all the time.

In the 1970s and 80s the WI went through a statistical fluke with a whole bunch of really talented players coming through at the same time. A boom so to speak.

Then we had a bust in the 1990s.

The newer or Pro model began with the Aussies in the 1980s.

They stressed development through coaching, academies and fitness training.

The idea was to take good players with the right temperament and DEVELOP them into superior Test performers.

It has worked very well and turned good players into very good Test performers who could support GREAT players.

Then Australia ran into another their own bunch of "greats" (McGrath, Warne and Ponting etc..) and became a super team.

The genius of the Pro model is not that it will produce geniuses.

After all, you can't legislate for genius. It just is.

Its superiority is that it will take a good player and make him a superior performer.

So a Matthew Hayden, who would have been a good player under the older system, becomes a "superstar" with the proper coaching.

Steve Harmison without a good fast bowling coach was a slightly wayward bowler who would have been a marginal performer in the old days.

Add in the English Cricket Academy, Cooley and Newcastle United and you have a very good bowler.

Sadly for the WI, it takes money - hundreds of thousands of US dollars -to build, equip and staff an Academy.

It probably takes another hundred thousand a year to hire a fast bowling coach.

It takes more money again to hold a 10 game FC season instead of a 7 game one.

The Pro model costs.

Sometimes, there is no substitute for money.

Which is something the WICb ain't got and from a marketing viewpoint ain't gonna have anytime soon.

As the WI have been unable to keep up with this change in world cricket, so the team have declined.

Thus we can all see WI players who have talent be they Ramdin, Bravo, Edwards (though I'm surprised by the praise here for Edwards) but the English or Australain Fidel, Dinesh or Dwayne would be further ahead in their development and probably still not played Test cricket.

You have raised a very good point Ninjaman and I would agree with most of it. Up until the time when cricket was played a “sport” the naturally gifted and talented cricketers from the West Indies were simply brilliant and the results showed it.

However in the mid to late eighties the game began to transform into an industry from being just a sport. Countries like Australia started spending millions (with the help of national government) on building infrastructure/ academies to build upon the natural talents of up and coming cricketers. Use of technology was at the forefront and the result is that ordinary cricketers like Hayden, Langer, Martyn and so on have been made to look like invincibles. Other countries soon started following the Australian model in some way or the other.

I suppose the West Indies cricket could not even dream of having this amount of resources at their disposal to spend on such an infrastructure. And the West Indies cricket suffered which is reflected in the results. Even now there are some highly talented players (such as Bravo, Ramdin, Edwards, Smith, Gayle to name a few) in the West Indies team who need to be nurtured for them to be world beaters.

Well written Django.

Could have written it myself.

Let us look at the economic realities.

The 4 out of 6 FC teams of the West Indies that are nation states for themselves have a combined population of about 4.5 million and a total budget of around US$ 7 billion. By that, I mean the money the governments have to spend.

New Zealand is the closest Test nation in terms of size to this. They have a population of around 4 million but a budget of around US$40 billion.

Australia may have five times more in terms of population but are a far richer country .

Don;t get hung up on the figures (got them from nationmaster.com, pretty cool site btw) just using them to highlight then when cricket moved to an issue of talent aided by investment, the WI was heading for the wall.

I will post later further points on economic realities

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Admin - Link to original thread in the International Test Cricket forum: West Indies - Will it ever regain its glory?
Nominated by Andy Mellon.