New cricket boss aims to develop winning culture

Newly elected president of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board (TTCB) Ellis Lewis yesterday said one of his immediate goals is to have national coaches work on the mental aspect of their game to cultivate a winning culture.

Speaking to Newsday from Tobago yesterday Lewis said: “Our cricketers seem to be lacking that winning drive and to be honest it is a culture thing. I want to immediately work on the players’ mental aspect of the game and have coaches take them through certain programmes so that a winning culture will be instilled in them. “I have a special interest in the coaching of the players and will be looking to implement certain ideas we have that would take cricket even further than it is right now. “Remember we are not starting from scratch, we already have our plans and we will just be following on from it. We recently devised a draft strategic planning document and there will be a one-day consultation very soon to address development.” One of his more immediate goals is to revive cricket in the South-West peninsular.

“We are going into the Point Fortin/La Brea area and we are going to try to develop a plan that would revive the sport in that area. We have had so much talented cricketers coming out of these areas in the past and this tells me that it is essential to have the sport properly organised in that part of the country. “We want to spread cricket throughout the length and breadth of Trinidad and Tobago as this we think would give us a greater pool of players to have available for national duty. “Another critical area of development is at the primary school level. Cricket in primary schools is very important and we are going to place a lot of emphasis on this. We are also going to look at the situation in Tobago where we think a lot more can be done for the sport. We are going to aggressively attack Tobago’s cricketing problems with the hope that the sport will be number one again across there,” Lewis said. Lewis defeated former Test wicketkeeper Deryck Murray last Saturday to land the prestigious position of president of the TTCB.