The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) is getting serious about fitness.
It has brought in Barbadian Dr. Sam Headley, an associate professor in exercise physiology at Springfield College in the United States, to set up a medical, physical and optical testing programme for all players chosen for the West Indies, from Under-15 level up.
President Pat Rousseau said here following the WICB’s annual general meeting he hoped “the whole procedure and the mechanics of it” would be in order by the end of the summer.
“We are going to start making this testing mandatory once we’ve got the programme in place,” Rousseau said.
“If you get selected to a team and we send you to the person who does the testing and you fail with no time to get ready, you’ll be put out of the side and a replacement will be found,” he added.
“These are professionals and, if they can’t get themselves physically fit, then they can’t fulfil their contracts.”
Rousseau explained that, at present, the contracts put the onus on the players themselves to be match fit but “we’re finding it’s not working like that.”
The plan was for similar tests to be extended to umpires.
Tests
“The umpires’ sub-committee of the board is going to meet with the West Indies Umpires Association on the subject of optical tests and physical tests,” Rousseau said. “I can’t see how you can umpire if you can’t pass the optical test.”
Headley is a Foundation School graduate who, as a left-handed batsman, captained the Barbados youth team in 1978 and played for Wanderers before leaving for the US.
“With the tremendous increase in the volume of cricket being played today, it is imperative that our players be properly conditioned if they are going to produce consistently good performances,” he wrote in the Red Stripe Caribbean Cricket Quarterly last year.
“It is also important that those involved with youth sport be familiar with some of the research findings as they relate the exercise science,” he added.
Headley noted that teams were now more evenly matched in skills levels than at any other time in his memory.
“The teams that succeed will be those which pay attention to those other ingredients necessary for success – notably motivation, discipline, mental toughness, tactical astuteness and physical fitness,” he asserted.
“This is where exercise science can help West Indies cricket,” he added. “If this area is ignored, I’m afraid that our cricket team will fall further behind the others.”