The correctness and urgency of the decision to establish the North Zone Academy of Cricket(NZAC) to nurture young players for international competition have been given impetus by the announcement by Cricket West Indies of the creation of a regional academy – the Emerging Players Annual Academy.
As if to acknowledge the importance and harmony of NZAC with the Antigua-based Academy, ours in the North Zone will cater for boys and girls from the very early teenage years. At the same time, the CWI Academy is for young players in their late teens. The intention here being that graduates will filter into regional and international cricket in a structured manner. This means that graduates of NZAC will be eligible to find space in the regional academy.
The success of Australia and England in setting up their own academies was made known with the passing of Rod Marsh. Those who witnessed and benefitted from the establishment of those academies came forward saying how much the training and mentoring received contributed to their careers. Fact is that several of the leading players of the last 25 years made their way to representing their countries from the academies.
Yes, we in the West Indies are more than a little late in the day after early attempts in Grenada and a couple more around the region to establish permanent academies at the West Indian level. But as the saying goes: “better late than never”. What is significant about the two academies is the organic fit: the graduates of one academy moving smoothly into the other. As it is said, “things don’t happen before their time.”
For those not fully aware of the establishment of the North Zone Academy of Cricket, you can find the outline of the Academy, its form, the intentions, and objectives elsewhere on this website.
Understandably, such a far-reaching venture requiring planning and critical funding to get it off the ground and to have it functional is a challenge for the executive of the Academy. The challenges centre around meeting the financial needs to establish the physical infrastructure and to assemble the human expertise required to move the Academy from the planning stage into reality.
Cricket training facilities—both on and off the field, balls, equipment to allow anyone, inclusive of those without the resources to acquire gear, will be able to use bats, pads, and the like acquired by the Academy. Attracting qualified and experienced coaches, who will have to be compensated for the time and expertise they will lend to the development of young players, will also mean that the Academy has to be sufficiently funded.
As indicated in the outline of the structure of the Academy, we shall have to procure the services of highly-trained and professionally experienced “head trainers” – sports psychologists to prepare young players for the mind game that is central to professional and representative cricket.
The executive administrators of the Academy, who are named elsewhere on this website, are therefore inviting participation in this venture by commercial and corporate sponsors and other organisations with a stake in developing and advancing national and regional (West Indian) cricket.
This is an invitation for all sharing in the stated objectives to become involved from the ground up to lay down the foundation for West Indies cricket “to rise again like a raging fire,” to quote our calypso poet, David Rudder in the anthem he gave to our team.
In addition to commercial sponsors facilitating the Academy to transition from being a paper institution of great potential and importance to a functioning centre capable of training and conscientising young players in the game, we are appealing to parents who want to give their children a head start, to join their human and physical resources to the effort.
We think the announcement by the CWI has provided an opportunity to capture this moment to make a small but vitally important start here with our own academy. Ultimately, our intention is to have similar academies operational in different cricket zones in Trinidad and Tobago. The expectation is that the creation of NZAC will eventually influence the mushrooming of similar ventures across all West Indian cricket-playing territories.
As indicated above, our intention is to have the NZAC serve to prepare and filter young teenage players into the regional academy. From there, we fully expect prepared young players, male and female, will graduate with the technical and mental apparatus to reach regional and eventually, international level competition.
Sponsors, parents, clubs, our national associations apart, we in NZAC see the establishment of this starting school for young West Indian players as an opportunity for many of the successful players who have come through the system and are playing professionally to make solid contributions to the young players who will join the Academy.
Financial contributions, the lending of their accumulated international experience to the young players who become students of the Academy, their time and talents and their mentoring skills to the young players will be invaluable contributions. Frankly, it will be impossible to have a professional and successful academy existing without the varied contributions of our international players.
We in the Caribbean must take hold of a successful tradition of having one generation teach the upcoming one to emulate and surpass the standards and markers they left behind.
So we invite the generation of today and those who went before to “chip in” in whichever way that is possible to get the venture off the ground to begin this historical journey forward.
We in the North Zone Academy of Cricket are fully conscious of us standing at a pivotal point in the history of West Indian cricket that is desperately in need of our assistance. “Having ruled the cricket world” for a decade and one half, the last two decades of losses and humiliation continue to sting with every new defeat. The fact is we have to put our money, our talents, our will, and intention where our mouths have been for a long time, to advance West Indies cricket.
It’s about moving our society from outside of the boundary to assembling ourselves on the field; put another way it’s about going beyond ole talk. To join us get in touch via the information on this website, through NZAC members, through receiving the message from carrier pigeons who will take the message far and wide in their flight.
Join this crusade to place West Indies cricket back to the pinnacle of respectability where our ancestors left it; we must take hold of our cricketing inheritance.
