By Kwesi Mugisa, commentary

Despite all the recent furore involving the Jamaica Cricket Board, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), any suggestion that the time has come for the country to go its own way is not only premature, but a grave mistake.

While the regional team has rolled around in the murky depths of mediocrity in recent times, few of us can argue, or need reminding, that the formula of a combined regional powerhouse has worked before.

The West Indies claimed both the 1975 and 1979 Cricket World Cups largely based on an ability to combine the talent of players like Gordon Greenidge (Barbados), Viv Richards (Antigua), Clive Lloyd (Guyana), and Michael Holding (Jamaica). Players who went on to become regional legends almost certainly would not have been able to compete at the very highest level with their individual countries.

Some will argue that infighting and disputes have rendered the regional model ineffective, but quarrels have always been a feature of the West Indies set-up and will continue to be the case whenever a people or group unites to pursue a common goal.

The problem the region now faces, or perhaps more correctly one among many, is the fact that talent alone is not enough in the modern game. Countries with far more resources have begun to focus on scientific application in their player development and it becomes a cause of how talent is nurtured and developed to achieve maximum output.

The West Indies have struggled in that regard. While the region doubtlessly has the talent, we have seemed to lack the resources, scientific application, and education expansion that go into the manufacturing of complete players (The WICB seems to be looking to address some of these shortcomings with the opening of the High Performance Centre). With those issues in mind, how then would we be better off as individual nations? While Jamaica currently has a good crop of players, who have dominated regionally, the population of the country is estimated to be somewhere in the region of 2,825,928, while the CARICOM population (although not all countries play the sport of cricket) is 15,961,203. surely if we aim to compete at the very highest level, there can be nothing gained from splitting our talent base. The issues of limited resources and our inability to properly develop players would still exist, perhaps even on a larger scale. With our local cricket clubs struggling to survive, battling year after year to host even the local leagues, I am yet to be convinced that the country could more effectively administrate the game at the international level.

While the WICB's administration of the game may leave a lot to be desired, the idea of recreating a miniature version, which is likely to be handcuffed by the same inefficiencies, is somewhat short-sighted.

Undoubtedly, our best bet at once again experiencing regional joy at dominating the world is to fix the wheel, not reinvent, or worse yet, build a smaller one.

Please send feedback to sports@gleanerjm.com

Or hit us up on Twitter @StarSportsJM

Responses will be carried in next Friday's publication

We look forward to hearing from you!