Developing Elite Players and Winning Teams are the two final core objectives of Cricket Canada’s adopted Strategic Plan.
Under the Elite Player Development Core the strategic objectives that have been identified for fulfillment are as follows:
Talent identification, development and retention; Development of HP infrastructure; Organize High level competition; Development of high level coaches and officials and the develop of an Accredited Academy System.
As a means of fulfilling these Elite Player development core objectives Cricket Canada has also identified a number of strategic initiatives that should be implemented. These are listed as follows:
- Monitor and improve elite player fitness (physical and mental)
- Develop national and regional high performance centers
- Develop elite player monitoring database (fitness, match performance etc.)
- Develop capacity for pre-match analysis and preparation
- Develop talent scouting program
- Start new elite league/ competition in Canada
- Accreditation programme for private academies
- Develop elite/ high level coaches
- Develop high level officials through training, experience and incentives to improve qualifications
- Develop player retention strategy targeting transition from youth to senior, senior player contracts, post retirement retention (coaches, scouts, selectors)
Cricket Canada has also established a series of Metrics, as a means of monitoring its progress on the implementation of the foregoing strategic initiatives. The Metrics that have been identified to serve as a measuring stick on Cricket Canada’s implementation of its established Elite Player Development Strategic Initiatives are as follows:
- The number of high-level coaches.
- The number of participants in HP programmes.
- The number of high level umpires.
- The number of leagues achieving HP status.
- The number of high performance games/ year.
- The number of players making transition from HP programmes to national teams.
In regard to its Core Objective to develop Winning Teams, the Strategic Objectives that have been identified for fulfillment are to improve the performance of representative teams through the use of state of the art training techniques that are designed to develop and increase the following: Physical Fitness; Cricket Skills; Mental Fitness; Team/Match Preparation and Performance Monitoring.
As with its Elite Player Development Strategic Module, Cricket Canada has also identified a series of Metrics that can be used as yardsticks to measure its actual progress being made on the implementation of its Winning Teams Strategic initiatives. These are as follows:
- Fitness levels of national player pools
- Individual player performance analysis/ ratio of positive trends
- Number of high performance matches played by each player
- Run rate curve for batting performance
- Economy rate for bowling performance
- Number of players (male, female, junior)
- Sponsorship revenue
- % ICC contribution to revenues
- One day match ranking
Several international tournaments have been scheduled for Canadian teams to compete in this year, beginning with the April ICC Division II Qualifiers in Namibia. As such come this December there should definitely be sufficient evidence available as to allow judgment on the extent to which Cricket Canada has fulfilled its established Elite Player Development and Winning Teams Strategic Objectives.