West Indies men’s cricket team continues to struggle at the international level and the legendary Andy Roberts feels that the coaches are being made the scapegoat while the root cause of the failures remains unaddressed. West Indies failed to advance to the Super 12 stage of the T20 World Cup last year and were clean swept 0-2 in a two-match Test series by Australia afterwards.
Cricket West Indies (CWI) did conduct an internal investigation following the world cup disaster and it resulted in head coach Phil Simmons announcing he’ll step down from the role following the Australia tour. Simmons’ exit was just the latest in a series of coaches being asked to step down following repeated failures something which continues to bother Roberts.
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“That’s exactly what they’re doing,” Roberts Jamaica Observer when asked if coaches are being blamed for the falures. “They have someone to blame, they’re blaming the coaches. How come we didn’t make five changes for the one-day international (ODI) team? We lost 2-0 in Australia; how come we didn’t make five changes to the Test team?”
“My emphasis doesn’t depend on coaching. It depends on the players shouldering the responsibility to develop their game to the point that all the coach has to do is to make sure they go through their drills,” he added.
Roberts even claims that CWI is wasting money on employing coaches – his argument based on the assumption that in cricket, coaches don’t make a significant impact on a team’s fortunes as compared to other sports.
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“I think we’re wasting a whole lot of dollars on employing coaches and our cricket still hasn’t moved an inch upwards. If it moved anywhere, it’s downwards,” Roberts, who represented West Indies between 1974 and 1983 said.
He recalled the time when West Indies won back-to-back ODI World Cups in 1975 and 1979 without any head coach.
“All of us were coaches,” Roberts said. “I can remember many times Deryck Murray, the wicketkeeper, would come to me and tell me, ‘listen, you’re falling away too much’.
“That’s what you needed from somebody who knows you, can analyse your game, and come and tell you. You don’t want them telling you two days later. You want them telling you in the heat of the moment so that you have time in which to try to correct it” he added.
Roberts also thinks that players need development from the age-group levels to clear their understanding of the game.
“We have to get this right and try to develop our players from Under-15s up to the senior level,” he said. “They are the ones who have to get it right. That is where you need your best coaches, not at the Test match level. At that level, you need somebody who can plan the game, who has an eye for the game and I don’t think that we have too many students of the game playing today.”
Roberts also believes that a captain cannot do much either if there aren’t capable players to execute his plans.
“I’m not going to blame the captain, you know,” he said. “You could make as correct a decision as you possibly can as the captain, but if you don’t have the players to carry out the instruction, how are you going to succeed? So, the emphasis should start on developing the players. Not coaches.”
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