WICB Christmas shopping list

LAST YEAR, we wrote to Santa, hoping that when he made his journey from the North Pole on Christmas Eve that he would have had an opportunity to stop off in Antigua and fill our stocking with a range of goodies that would continue to see West Indies cricket make the challenging climb back to the top. As we look back at the letter, our stocking may not have been filled with all we’d requested, but St Nick certainly brought us some good cheer throughout the year. We asked him for an invincible West Indies team because our aim was to become the leading cricket team in the world once again. So we are pleased that some of the players that we’d identified last year — Chris Gayle, Wavell Hinds, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Marlon Samuels and Jermaine Lawson — made their mark on our team’s game.
 
We had asked for our players to be injury free.  For most of the year we had little or no injury and this enabled us to do some wonderful things. Although some injury setbacks have caused us some concern we have taken measures to address them such as beefing up our medical panel, appointing a full-time physiotherapist for our current tour of southern Africa, and proposing a retainer contract system which would allow us to better monitor the fitness of players. With these measures in place, we hope St Nick bestows us with gifts that include healthy players for the year and more success on the field. Another gift we’d asked for was to win the World Cup in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya. We did not receive it, but had the pleasure of a stunning victory over South Africa. We now look forward to the ICC Champions Trophy in England next year and on our gift list is a request for our team to win it.

We had asked Santa for victory in the Cable & Wireless 2003 Cricket Series against Australia. We received a world record Test match win and for this we are thankful. We now look forward to the reciprocal series in Australia at the end of the coming year. We hope that we can translate that record Test win into a memorable series victory and, while we are in the mode of series wins, our gift list also calls for successful outings against South Africa in South Africa, England and Bangladesh in the Caribbean, and England in England over the next year. Off the field, we’d asked for an inspirational Chief Executive Officer. Roger Brathwaite was the answer and many would agree that he has helped ensure that the Board is run efficiently in an atmosphere of high productivity and that he has built key relationships with external stakeholders. We ask that he continues to build on that platform for the New Year and that our team would be even more dynamic, committed and innovative.

One thing that we anticipated in our stocking was for full participation in the development programme. We had allocated over US $2 million, an eight-fold increase over what we spent the previous year. We are pleased to say that we achieved most, if not all of our targets in the arena of development. For this, we thank Dr Michael Seepersaud, our Chief Cricket Development officer, for his tireless work over what was a challenging year. We ask for the strength and wherewithal for him and his team to continue their sterling work. Of all the requests we made the one that brought us the most joy was the arrival of sponsors for our domestic competitions. Carib Beer came on board for the regional first-class, Red Stripe Beer renewed for the regional One-Day matches, and the TCL Group supported the Under-19s. We would be pleased with securing sponsorship for the Under-15 competition and if we could sign an agreement with a number of Caribbean companies to support our senior West Indies team on overseas trips. We express our gratitude once again for the continued support of Cable & Wireless, Shell, Scotiabank, Pepsi and Admiral among others with whom we had established relationships prior to 2003.
 
Finally, we ask for continued success in preparing for and implementing the ICC Cricket World Cup West Indies 2007. Twelve official bid committees have registered for the Host Venue Selection Tender; a global search has begun for Human Resource Management and Development consultants to assist us in ensuring that a world class organisation runs the ICC CWC 2007; and CARICOM Heads have made a commitment to set up mechanisms to ensure that preparations for the event run smoothly. To all West Indies cricket lovers, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.