ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (CMC) – Captain Kieron Pollard has urged young West Indies players to think bigger than the Caribbean Premier League (CPL), and believes the region needs another Twenty20 tournament in order to properly develop the next generation.

Speaking in the wake of the Caribbean side’s failed campaign at the ongoing Twenty20 World Cup on Saturday, Pollard stressed the value of raising performance standards and said playing in other global T20 tournaments allowed players to further enhance their skills.

“For me personally, [I would] just tell them (young players) that CPL is not the be-all and end-all. There’s a lot of higher, better, sort of cricket around the world. And as individuals, we need to lift our standards and not settle and be contented,” Pollard said.

“My message would be: we have to work harder and we need to put a lot of thought in what we do, and again, be disciplined in what we do.

“I think we have a mindset at times to be contented but as I said, coming to CPL, dominating CPL is not the be-all and end-all. You need to come and try to dominate on the world stage and the world stage is at World Cups … IPL franchises, where all the best players around the world gather as one.

“There’s a lot of work to be done. We are not lacking for talent but the work needs to start now and we need to be honest and upfront about it, and we need to challenge ourselves.”

West Indies arrived at the tournament as reigning champions but saw their title defence fall flat, losing four of their five games to finish fifth of six teams in Group 1 on two points.

The major source of grief for the Caribbean side was their lethargic batting which resulted in a near historic low of 55 in their opening game against England, and inadequate totals throughout.

Pointing to the CPL – the Caribbean’s premier domestic T20 franchise tournament – Pollard said the showpiece was “recycling” the same players each year and discussions needed to take place among stakeholders on establishing another competition aimed at unveiling new talent.

“For the last ten years or so, we have had, again, sort of the same guys playing T20 and sort of dominating as we go along,” he contended.
“One of the things that for us that we need to do, especially in the Caribbean, is we need to have another tournament other than CPL, whereas we can unearth new talents.

“When we had the Caribbean T20, that was an opportunity for people to bring new talents from different parts of the Caribbean and we are able to have a sort of nucleus for this last generation also.

“But since CPL has come in, yes, it’s a franchise-base system, but we have only the opportunity to sort of recycle the same players over and over and over again.”

He continued: “So it’s something we need to look at but there are some cricketers and a lot of young cricketers looking forward to playing and contributing to West Indies cricket.

“It’s something for me personally I’m excited about and it’s the end of a generation but there’s a lot of conversations that need to take place of how you’re going to make a transformation from the club cricket, or even CPL into international cricket because there’s a big step up.

“I think in between there, what we need is another tournament. If you look around the world, there are different tournaments and different teams playing so you can convert talent.”

The CPL bowled off in the 2013 replacing the Cricket West Indies-run Caribbean T20 and has emerged as one of the most popular franchise competitions on the T20 circuit.