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The first group of graduates from the Shell Cricket Academy of St George's University has been charged with the responsibility of dismissing the notion that West Indians are calypso cricketers.

The challenge was issued yesterday by new West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) president Wes Hall in an address here during the inaugural graduation ceremony that marked the end of a three-month programme for the 23 participants.

There has been a popular view that West Indian cricketers play on the basis of raw talent, hand-eye co-ordination and courage, Hall told an audience that included former Grenada Governor-General Sir Paul Scoon.

They used to call us calypso cricketers and despite the fact that we have had world championships in all forms of cricket, this view is still held in some quarters.

I am charging you today that you have the responsibility to change that view worldwide.

Hall, a former fearsome West Indies fast bowler of the 1960s, team manager and a chief selector, said however, the intention should not be to play dull cricket.

I am not calling for the reduction or absence of flare, creativity or aggression in our West Indian batsmen, he said.

Neither I am calling for the passion, hostility and craftiness of our West Indian fast bowlers to wane because that is the West Indian way. Most people say there is no West Indian way.

He was convinced, however, there was a West Indian way on the basis of what was produced by the likes of Sir Garfield Sobers, Sir Vivian Richards, Rohan Kanhai and Malcolm Marshall.

I have watched these icons and I am saying that they played the West Indian way, Hall said.

What I am calling for is a mix of those attributes, with a sense of purpose, commitment and a sense of community to the region, not only to your families and your village, but to the region.

The graduation marked the end of a programme in which the participants were exposed to major components of a cricket programme fitness, technique, tactics and strategy, mental skills and mastery of the basics and improvement of attitudes, self-discipline and thinking.

They were also involved in off-field activities that featured reading, writing, and etiquette, public speaking, communication, sports nutrition, functional anatomy and money management.

It was an exercise that made them special, according to Hall.

I wish you to know that the training you have had, no other individual or group of West Indian cricketers have benefited from that type of training and that is in 101 years of first-class cricket, Hall said to the attentive group.

Gentlemen, you are the first. They will never be another first.

All the other graduands of this academy will be judged by the standards that you have set as pioneers. That cannot be erased.

The WICB president reminded the participants, whose ages range between 18 and 23, that their graduation should be seen as a stepping stone for the future.

We are here to celebrate with you on your graduation day, but really the question is what is a graduation?

A graduation is about achievement. It is about an exercise of a disciplinary approach to a task. It is about empowerment, giving you the tools to excel in your chosen endeavour.

Hall also told the students that a graduation did not instantly make them superstars.

Let me warn you that merely graduating from this academy will not make all of you superstars under construction, no more than it will make a cat who was born in an oven a bread, he said.

You will not be a superstar just because you came here. My mission statement you to, therefore is this: `Life is not a co-incidence. It is not happenstance. It is a reflection of you. You must remember that as long as you live.'

Hall was certain that the exercise would have prepared the players for the demands of the international game.

I appreciate that I may very well be preaching to the converted, for I am confident that in the last three months, your class room instructions would have exposed you to major intellectual that is the ability to reason psychologically that has to do with your mindset, physical that is training in your body and moral training which has to do with your soul, he said.

During the two-hour long ceremony, there were also addresses from Academy director Dr Rudi Webster, Shell's External Affairs Manager of the Caribbean, Roger Brathwaite and Zaheer Ali, who spoke on behalf of the graduands.

Each graduand was presented with a certificate from Dean of Arts & Sciences and Graduate School of St. George's University, Dr Ted Hollis.

There were also awards for the top students. They were Ryan Hinds, Most Improved Player; Keith Hibbert, Most Improved Batsman; Seunarine Chattergoon and Rayon Griffith, Best Work Ethic; and Theodore Modeste, Most Improved Bowler, Most Disciplined.

© The Barbados Nation