IF THE BARBADOS CRICKET team is to be successful, discipline will have to play an integral part.
That is the word from newly appointed manager Hartley Reid, who insists that discipline will play a key part in the team’s success in the 2013 regional cricket season.
Speaking to the media at Kensington Oval recently, Reid, a former policeman, believed that when it came to talent, Barbados was second to none. However, he pointed out that talent and skill would count for nothing if the players were not disciplined.
“There is no doubt in my mind that the members of the Barbados teams in the past have been no different from those from Trinidad and Tobago or Jamaica. Performance-wise, they are equal or maybe even better, but if we have had a problem in Barbados cricket, it had to have been in discipline,” he said.
“Discipline bears the most important part of any productivity, because I don’t care how well equipped you are, if your brain is not working and you are not disciplined, you will not perform.”
Reid said he believed that his past association with the Congress of Trade Unions and Staff Associations of Barbados (CTUSAB) would greatly help him in his role as manager.
The former first vice-president of CTUSAB said that the people skills he developed in his time with the trade union would assist him when it came to interacting and dealing with the players.
“I am hoping to keep the players steady and focused on the fact that cricket is the bedrock of Barbadian society, and that discipline is very important. I will try my best to instil in the players that they need to realize that they are representing Barbados, and that in itself calls for a degree of pride and discipline.
“Once you accept the responsibility of representing your country, then you need to recognize that discipline is imperative because people who are supporting Barbados, whether at home or abroad, are the ones who are going to feel very poorly when they discover that our cricketers have been deemed the worst behaved cricketers in the region.”
Barbados have named a provisional squad of 23 players for January’s Caribbean T20.
The Sagicor T20 tournament, which gets under way today, offers players who haven’t been called to trials the chance to impress the selection committee headed by Henderson Wallace.
