West Indies must follow England with long-term World Cup plan, says Desmond Haynes

JAMES COYNE: Haynes recently applied for the role of West Indies head coach, and reached the last stages before losing out to Phil Simmons

Legendary opener Desmond Haynes says he wants to see a concrete plan put in place to plot West Indies’ assault on the World Cup and the World Test Championship.

Haynes recently applied for the role of West Indies head coach, and reached the last stages before losing out to Phil Simmons.

Asked if he was encouraged that West Indies’ results had turned the corner since the grim days of the early 2000s, with a 2-1 Test series win against England earlier this year still fresh in the memory, he preferred to reserve judgement.

“No, I can’t say that things are a lot better, because we had a very poor World Cup,” Haynes, speaking to promote Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc at World Travel Market, told The Cricketer.

“It’s early doors for our 50-over cricket, so you have to wait and give them a chance to see if a new captain in Kieron Pollard can affect change.

“As a past player, I want to hear about your plans.

“England set out their plans for the 2019 World Cup in 2015. They put in place a core of people – OK, one or two might come in after that – who they wanted to get playing together.

“It’s early doors for our selectors too. But they need to plan for 2023. Then I’ll have hope. If we go and play one or two 50-over games and don’t do too well, then we start panicking and pick a whole new raft of players, then that messes up the whole planning process.”

He said he was happy that West Indies – with so many of their brightest young players flitting around the world playing franchise cricket, and the IPL clashing with the Caribbean domestic season – had relaxed their policy on players needing to appear in domestic competitions.

^{West Indies beat England 2-1 in a Test series at the start of 2019}

“I’m glad to see they relaxed that rule. I suffered from that rule. My career came to an end because I missed one game. I was playing for Western Province in South Africa and never got back in time. Then my career came to an end that way.

“They have to try to pick the players who are available. If someone is available, they can play. Give people the opportunity to make themselves available for your tournament.

“But if you’re asking me to come back and play, but you take your A-team away on a tour when the season’s on, that defeats the whole purpose. You want your best available players to boost the development of the up-and-coming players. You need to find your competition being played at the time when the majority are available.”

As for West Indies’ Test cricket, they have not made a strong start to the WTC, losing two games in India, despite their habitual two and three-Test series potentially working in their favour under the league's points system.

Haynes is advocating a return to a four-pronged pace attack in most conditions.

“Well, I believe that over the years our strength came from having four fast bowlers with some good batsmen. That’s a system to win Test matches. But you have to have the batting to back it up. There’s no point setting a target of 120 if you can’t get it.

“To think about spinners in the Caribbean, forget it.”

Haynes would like to play a role mentoring young opening batsmen in the Caribbean for the rigours of red-ball cricket, but sadly does not hold out much hope of being asked by Cricket West Indies.

“I think that’s needed. You can’t have people with the expertise, the know-how, not being used…

“What we do in the Caribbean which is a little depressing is, if you speak to the authorities, they say ‘yes, these guys have got something to offer’. But you never get invited to do anything. They’re just talking the talk. I’m not giving up hope, but I don’t really expect much from the way they’re going about it.”

^{Haynes missed out on the West Indies head coach job to Phil Simmons}

Haynes was speaking primarily to promote tourism to Barbados – an ever-popular destination for Brits, especially when England are playing Test cricket at the Kensington Oval, where Haynes struck four Test centuries.

The island has always been very much the stronghold of West Indies cricket, and he reports that the game is still in good health in his home country.

“People come to Barbados and say they don’t see kids playing on the streets or the beach anymore, and want to know if the sport is dying.

“But in Barbados there’s more organised sport than ever before – there are various academies at the clubs and the Barbados Cricket Association programme, so it’s organised.

“Cricket is still the main sport that people want to play. There’s so much money in cricket now that people see it as a way out now. If you come good, you can make a lot of money.

“I think people still see it as making a decent living – as a chance to play for your country and region, but if you can’t then to play for the various franchises round the world.”

He said it was subtly different when he came through in the 1970s.

“I came up at a time when we had Sir Garfield Sobers, Seymour Nurse, Wes Hall, Charles Griffith, Sir Everton Weekes – we were producing so many fine cricketers, as a young person you wanted to be like them. With all our past greats from before, all you wanted to do was play cricket.

“I don’t think there were great facilities – and that was one thing that made us who we were. You were very determined to learn your craft.

“It didn't matter what you played on. I thought that was quite refreshing back in those days. There weren’t many perfect wickets. If you were someone with a very strong character, you would play on wickets not so prepared, and show you could play for West Indies.

“One thing you can be assured of in Barbados is that if you are any good at cricket, you will be spotted very early on, because we have competitive leagues in place from an early age. Even if you’re 11 years old some games are being shown on the news.”

The Barbados cricket legends were at World Travel Market with Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc, promoting travel to Barbados to enjoy its rich cricket heritage which includes the famous Kensington Oval which will host the West Indies v England Test match in January 2020 and ODI cricket in February 2020, the Cricket Legends of Barbados Museum and Sir Garfield Sobers’ International Schools Cricket Tournament in Barbados in July 2020. For more information please visit www.visitbarbados.org

The Cricket Legends of Barbados Museum reflects Barbadian cricketers who excelled in the game of cricket on the world stage playing for the West Indies teams over the last 100 years. It’s a fascinating museum filled with a treasure trove of memorabilia and a captivating press room. A must see for cricket fans, this museum is the best of its kind in the Caribbean, located next to Barbados’ infamous cricketing ground Kensington Oval. www.cricketlegendsbarbados.com