FORMER Guyana and West Indies captain Alvin Kallicharran said that the time has come for him to play an active role in helping to develop the game of cricket in his homeland. 

The now 65 year-old Kallicharran scored 12 centuries in his 66 Tests played for the West Indies, with 187 his highest score.. He also played 31 ODIs during his 1972-1981 stretch of his playing career, after making his debut against New Zealand at the Georgetown Cricket Club ground Bourda in 1972..
While the focus is on developing West Indies Cricket, Kallicharran said that emphasis should be placed on developing Guyana’s cricket first.
Speaking at a Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) press conference on Friday at the Grand Coastal Inn, Kallicharran said his aim is to work with the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) from the grassroots level of the game; something he had even written to the Government of Guyana about approximately three years ago.
“I sent my CV to the government about three years ago and I received an email from the Minister of Sport back then, thanking me for my CV and said he would get back to me. That was three years ago. So it’s not that I haven’t tried,” the legendary West Indies batsman said.
“The game hasn’t changed, the ground remains the same 22 yards, and 75 yards, all that has changed sadly is the quality of cricket. Don’t talk administration. If we focus on cricket we wouldn’t have time to focus on administrators. That maroon cap, that blazer and winning for the West Indies meant the most to us back in the day,” he further pointed out.
The only difference, the Berbician pointed out, is the era, as Kallicharran urged the future generation of the game “to don’t think about the game as a short-term career.
“If you look long-term, you will have a vision and that vision will be to perform and then your career takes off. When we were playing – from the Sir Garfield Sobers to all the other greats – if we were to say that we were underpaid, imagine what the ones before us were getting.”
Kallicharran listed Sir Gary Sobers, Sir Frank Worrell, Rohan Kanhai and Lance Gibbs as some of the greatest to ever play the game of cricket and said, “If we look at the game itself, they set a high standard for us to walk in and all we had to do was to maintain it and the rest would have to follow.”
Over the last two years, the GCB along with the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) had been at loggerheads with the Government of Guyana over the Cricket Administration Act.
The passage of the Bill; the first of its kind in Guyana, had aggravated that already fragile relationship between the parties, but, Kallicharran is optimistic that “if everything works out well and the board gets over everything that’s happened, people like me can contribute and bring back things. Forget West Indies Cricket, develop Guyana First!”
A left-handed batsman and right-arm off-spinner, Kallicharran was known for his elegant, watchful batting style. He was a Wisden Cricketer-of-the-Year for 1973.
He was part of the 1975 and 1979 teams that won the ICC Cricket World Cup. His highest score is 187 against India on the 1978–79 tour. Kallicharran also found success with Warwickshire in English County cricket. While playing against minor county Oxfordshire in the 1984 one-day Natwest Trophy he scored 206 and took 6 for 32.
One of his most memorable international innings, a knock of 158 against England, was shrouded in controversy when he was run-out by Tony Greig on the final ball of the first day.
He attempted to join World Series Cricket, but failed, and was appointed captain of the West Indies in 1977–1978 when Clive Lloyd resigned over the Packer issue.
Kallicharran was later involved in further controversy when he led an unofficial rebel tour to South Africa in defiance of the Gleneagles Agreement and anti-apartheid protesters in that country who asserted that official sporting structures were discriminatory and saw out the rest of his career playing for Orange Free State and Transvaal in South African domestic cricket.