Why India is cricket's best and WI its worst

THE EDITOR: While it can be said that the WI cricket team has one of the worst youth player to senior team legend records in the history of the sport, it can also be said that the Indian cricket team has one of the best such records. WI would therefore do well to study them in great detail.

The pillar of the Indian youth development programme in cricket is discovering match-winners as early as possible and blooding them as early as possible in the senior team next to seasoned veterans who they will ultimately replace as legends and veterans in the team.

Indians believe greatly in the concept of the talismanic player who has what they consider to be personal magic or what the Americans call the right stuff, that would make the whole team great by teaching it how to forget to lose.

WI cricket not surprisingly, has the opposite approach in which we marginalise and sideline talismans because WI are intimidated by the very powerful character and joi de vivre they possess to make them the champions of a team that wins.

So a player like Shamar Springer goes undeveloped at the highest levels of cricket, as a talisman, in the Caribbean so that if he ever does get into the WI cricket, by age 26 or thereabouts, he is so disillusioned and suppressed that he has lost that magic spark or "the right stuff" and is unable to do at the senior level what was easy to him at youth level.

I hope this has not yet happened to Springer and I hope it is not done to other young talents of a talismanic nature in the WI cricket setup, like Trinidadian Djenaba Joseph.

This case has been argued successfully by the fact that it was not Rahane or Rohit or Kholi who led India to a 2-1 Test cricket victory over the mighty Australians away from home, but the young talismans and future legends in the form of Pant and Gill.

Indians all over the world can now expect to retain the Border-Gavaskar and many other trophies for the foreseeable future because of their visionary youth cricket policy while for WI cricket, the trophy cupboard continues to remain bare due to our lack thereof.

FITZROY OTHELLO

Via e-mail