Too much focus on youth — Lara

ADELAIDE: He may have his hands full as captain of the West Indies team taking on a superior Australian side and a mercurial Pakistani outfit in the VB Series, but Brian Lara still has the time to launch a broadside against the authorities back in the Caribbean for putting too much focus on youth at the expense of consistent senior performers. “My problem is that the organisers are driving the older players out of the game,” the West Indies captain stated emphatically when questioned yesterday about the declining standards in regional cricket as reflected in the low scores in the first three rounds of the 2005 Carib Cup.

“The minute you are 26 or 27 years old, it seems you are lost to West Indies cricket, and the experienced guys, who can mix and teach the younger players, are not there any more. They don’t see a future,” Lara said. The 35-year-old compared the West Indian scenario with what prevails on the Australian scene at the highest level. “The likes of Matthew Hayden and (Darren) Lehmann had been out of the international scene for four or five years,” Lara observed.  “But they came back in their late 20s and early 30s, getting an opportunity still to play for Australia. That doesn’t happen in the West Indies. When you do miss out for any length of time and you get beyond 26, 27, it seems like your chance is gone,” he said.

Despite that broad generalisation, the skipper acknowledged that there were a couple exceptions on the current campaign. “We’ve got special cases like (Ian) Bradshaw and Courtney Browne, but the norm is that these guys (of similar age) are not involved anymore,” Lara contended.  “I don’t know exactly what the average age is among regional teams in the West Indies, but we’ve got 19 and 20-year-olds playing cricket,” Lara said. “Of course the scores are not going to be good because they don’t represent the best players from each territory. It seems like we’re still on a learning curve in our domestic cricket. It’s not very competitive and it’s something we’ve got to look at,” the WI captain said.

Continuing to extol the virtues of rewarding performance, at whatever age, Lara cited a couple examples of players who should still be involved at regional level. “I believe the likes of Stuart Williams and Sherwin Campbell, as long as they are fit, should still be considered. They should still be knocking on the door (of West Indies selection) if they have a very good season,” he stated. “Williams has had continuously good scores in our First-Class cricket over the years, yet he is not looked at,” said Lara. Campbell, the former Barbados opener, last played for the West Indies as a late call-up for the series against Pakistan in Sharjah in 2002.  Leeward Islands opener Williams and Windwards wicketkeeper Junior Murray were both recalled at the start of the home series against India in that same year but were subsequently discarded after a run of low scores, Murray after two matches, Williams after the Third Test.

“It’s about trying to get a good mix and trying to get the standard of our cricket up,” Lara explained.  “If you’ve got guys leaving Under-19 cricket and coming immediately and representing their countries at senior level, the standard is not going to be good for some time.”  Prodded further about the plight of West Indies cricket, the regional captain agreed that the facilities, and more precisely the state of the pitches in the Caribbean, were significant contributory factors in the decline. “We’ve always had that problem, not just in First-Class cricket,” a clearly frustrated Lara continued.  “The facilities you see here, it’s not the same back home. On many occasions I’ve got into problems with my own home ground, the Queen’s Park Oval, in terms of preparation for Test matches. That hasn’t been great. It’s something again we’ve got to look at.” (CMC)