Lara says region still needs academy

LONDON, England (CMC) -- West Indies batting legend Brian Lara has reiterated his call for a Caribbean cricket academy.

The 40-year-old Lara, who quit international cricket in 2007 following the Cricket World Cup in the region, said this initiative would kick-start development and help put West Indies back on sound footing.

Lara was speaking during a visit to Trinity School in Croydon to mark Commonwealth Day on Monday.

"I think the main thing is that we need to set up academies, and not necessarily every single island having one, but I think we should have a centralised academy where all the youngsters come together under good coaches," the former West Indies captain said.

"Maybe past players, [it] does not matter who the coaches are as long as they are well qualified and get them together working. I believe if we do that then maybe five, 10 years down the line you can see some semblance of what we were doing in the past.

"At present I think we are just doing what we did 20-25 years ago and hoping that the kids with the talent will come through and we will beat people around the world, and that's not happening, as you see."

Lara, one of the finest Test batsmen ever, has in the past called on Caribbean cricket authorities to set up a state-of-the-art academy to arrest the declining standards of cricket in the region.

To date, however, Lara said he had seen no attempt to establish such an institution despite the benefits to be derived.

"I believe that our structure is not good. We do not have the academies to support the youngsters and our team is still built on natural ability and in sport nowadays natural ability is a small part of it," said Lara, who holds the record for the highest scores in Test and first-class cricket.

"The amount of technology that is happening and how people are learning about the game much faster, I believe we need to head in that direction and there's nowhere on the horizon that I've seen where we have taken that step."

Lara, who finished with an amazing 11,953 runs from 131 Tests, said he did not see the current team becoming as dominant as the 1980s juggernaut.

"I think it will be difficult to be as invincible as we were back in the seventies and eighties," he noted.

"Even when I started we were on the decline and we were not playing series 5-0 like we did in the past."

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