Not surprising, at all !

To begin with, let me state the unobvious. I am a huge admirer of Trinidad and Tobago. Not just the cricket team, but the island-nation, it’s culture, the music (Chutney and Soca for starters) and sorry if I got this one wrong, the politics. In fact, one of my Trinidadian friends calls me “Naina” (because Jep Sting Naina – one of the hit Chutney songs in Trinidad) But what led me to fall in love with these very attributes was cricket, of course. So, to see them perform as well as they are doing in the Airtel Champions League T20 is heartening, but the analyst in me says it shouldn’t be surprising – for Trinidad perhaps have the best cricketing set-up in the Caribbean and should ideally stand out as the model, the bigger West Indies Cricket Board must look up to.

Okay. I follow two teams very closely in the West Indies – Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana (blame me for being parochial here, but that’s where I get to see how the players of Indian origin are performing). From what I’ve seen for the past two-three years, Trinidad has somewhere raised its level cricket – off and on the field – a notch. There is not just a concious effort on the part of the cricketers to perform on the field, coming up with individual and team excellence consistently, but also the administrators have put their hands up, by making available a platform for youngsters to come through the ranks, make the cut and the results, of course are here to see.

During the World T20 in London, I had a chance to interact with Omar Khan, the manager of the West Indies team just before the semi-finals and for someone who’s seen Trinidad cricket inside out (as the Trinidad and Tobago team former manager), Khan came up with some interesting insights on how both the stint during the previous administration and the current one headed by Dereck Murray and Forbes Persaud (CEO) are stepping up efforts to a) spread the game among the people of the islands and b) invest more of the resources in youth cricket in Trinidad – with talent scouting and development activities across the islands. And the results are there to see – in the past two-three years, Trinidad and Tobago has its own way, produced cricketers who’ve worn that Maroon baggy and most importantly (not just for the West Indies, but also across age-group levels and the West Indies A). During that very conversation, Khan emphasized the discipline and pride (for the flag and in one’s own performances) as two key factors in shaping up Trinidad’s progress in the domestic circuit.

In a region like the West Indies, which has been bereft of administrative leadership for the past decade, Trinidad’s success in India must somewhere reinforce that a firm off-the-field setup could and is demonstratively leading to great on-field success. For sure. As Tony Cozier writes, it’s time the WICB and the WIPA learn something from both TTCB and Daren Ganga’s boys. Ganga’s leadership has been absolutely immense, to say the least. And having seen him lead the West Indies in England a couple of seasons back, captain Trinidad in the Stanford 20/20 and now, there is a marked transformation in Ganga. Once, he was perhaps the most “technically sound” batter in the West Indies and there again, unlike many West Indian talents who were forced out or faded away, Ganga found his place in leadership, which in many ways has turned out to be one of the X-factors of the T&T team.

And remember, during this whole crisis in Caribbean cricket, Trinidad and Tobago quietly stayed out of it, by not committing players for national selection. Instead, Persaud even came up with a radical idea of Trinidad and Tobago playing as a “different nation” altogether, breaking away from the WICB. Now this, would be a tragic proposal and one hopes, it never goes through. Why ? Because Trinidad and Tobago are integral to West Indies cricket. The brand of cricket they endorse is different – perhaps embodies the best from each island in the Caribbean. I’ll refuse to quote the classic cliche – saying “a Trinidadian win could revitalize West Indies cricket”. But what it would do is to send a clear message across the cricketing establishment in the West Indies – “Get your house in order, and results may follow. If we can, you can too.”