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Powell believes administrators are now forced to address the issue of discipline and behaviour given clear, disturbing trends in regional cricket.
“If you read reports recently coming from the Shell Cricket Academy and even from the A team’s tour of England, they are pointing towards certain things that the managers and people attached to the academy thought were natural, `please, and thank you and excuse me’ which are lacking,” Powell said.
“We are going to have to insist that at the club, island level and regional level, that these matters are given some attention,” added Powell, who is also a West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) director.
Former Test pacer Joel Garner, who was manager to the West Indies A team’s summer tour of England and Canada, told the media on his return to the Caribbean in August that his tour report would make a strong statement about appalling levels of indiscipline by some players on the tour.
Dr Rudi Webster, chief administrator at the Shell Cricket Academy, has also pointed to problems with some students coming to the academy. He said in an interview last month, that some players at the academy displayed such poor discipline, they should not have even been there.
Powell believes player counselling and specialised work on off-the-field issues must be institutionalised at all levels of regional cricket.
“We have to do more for the players than just arrange coaching and training in cricketing terms,” said Powell on CMC’s CricketPlus broadcast of the Champions Trophy tournament.
“My experience, having managed both at Under-15 and senior team levels here in the Caribbean, is that for these young players, you have to arrange everything, from tutorials to assist with their schoolwork, to classes in etiquette, social graces, the whole works.
“And an area that we haven’t paid a lot of attention to has to do with the social lives of our young players and in some instances our mature players,” Powell said.
Powell said the region is now faced with a different mentality from current players, who have inflated impressions of their ability and do not appear to cherish the opportunities they now have.
“The players are coming to us and sort of indicating when they are maybe just a little good that ‘I am great’.
“We need to teach these players that no matter how good they might think they are, that we have had players that have been in some instances maybe five times as good as they and haven’t played in West Indian colours,” Powell said.