The West Indies Breakout League T20 competition bowled off on April 25 at the Brian Lara Cricket Stadium in Tarouba. It is a premier T20 cricket tournament designed to spotlight emerging talent from across the Caribbean. It continues until May 10.
According to reliable reports, each team is closely affiliated with a Caribbean Premier League franchise, providing players with an opportunity to showcase their skills on a larger stage and progress their cricketing careers.
However, is this the stage for youngsters to do this? Cricket West Indies president Dr Kishore Shallow described the league as a necessary and strategic move to reshape how talent is developed in the Caribbean. He said this fresh T20 League is a proving ground for the stars of tomorrow. He believes it will usher in a new generation of T20 cricketers. And that this is the first step on that journey.
He misses the point. One cannot be a well-developed T20 cricketer by playing T20 cricket only.
A young cricketer has to learn how to play the game, firstly, by applying himself to the longer game, like in the first-class match, two innings per team, or their club’s first-division games. In this way they master batting technique – the line, length, spin and control of bowling as well as the strategy and tactics of field-placing and bowling changes.
Games where, by experience, he learns how to examine batsmen and work them out.
A batsman improves his discipline by learning to place the ball away from fielders, working out how to play an innings by taking subtle singles, combined with selective boundary hits. It would help them to think and concentrate more. They can’t learn this against top-class bowlers and batsmen by moving directly into T20 cricket against top opposition. One has to learn the game first and can’t do that by only playing T20 cricket.
[caption id="attachment_1152155" align="alignnone" width="1024"] -[/caption]
Then it goes on, as per tournament regulations, each team is allowed to protect seven cricketers, with a maximum of three players aged between 27 and 29. And then at least one must be a leg spinner! It does not matter whether this person has the ability at a particular standard, as long as they bowl leg spin.
Are these organisers going to suggest when to bowl the “leggie?” They didn’t stipulate if he ought to possess the googly and/or the top-spinner. Should he be a right-handed back-of-the-hand leg-break bowler or a left-hander who would bowl leg-breaks to left-handed batsmen?
These non-thinking people who happen to be in authority and making up the rules, exposing their total lack of cricket intelligence, then expect these poor, struggling cricketers to walk out on the field of play and create magically, brilliant stroke play and solid defences, plus, the ability in playing the game, in order to defeat the opposition on a given day.
It is sad to reach the day when cricket administrators, without a scintilla of cricket knowledge, are in charge of building young cricketers into sound, winning teams.
It is hig
