The Hidden Cost of Producing a West Indies Cricketer
Pt 2
Issue No 27
When people talk about development systems failing, they usually point to drop-off rates.
Too many players falling away.
Not enough making it through.
In Caribbean cricket, that diagnosis misses the point.
The drop-off doesn’t happen where most people think it does.
The pathway is actually stable early on
Between Under-15, Under-17, and Under-19 levels, attrition is relatively modest.
Players are identified early.
Squads remain tight.
Movement between levels is limited.
The system is doing what it’s designed to do.
The real drop-off happens after Under-19 cricket ends.
What actually happens post-U19
Looking at historical outcomes:
Roughly 75–85% of Under-19 players never secure a professional contract
About 15–25% go on to earn professional contracts within 3–5 years
Around 5–10% reach international cricket
Fewer than 5% ever reach IPL-level earnings
This is not unique to the Caribbean. It’s elite sport.
And this is where cricket keeps making the same mistake.
Failure isn’t the issue
Most players were never supposed to make it professionally.
That’s not harsh.
That’s reality.
Higher education works the same way.
So do most high-performance pipelines.
The issue isn’t that many don’t succeed.
The issue is that cricket treats every outcome the same financially.
Whether a player:
leaves the game at 20, or
plays five years professionally, or
becomes a long-term international
the development system sees the same result.
Zero return.
Zero recycling.
Zero sustainability.
The contradiction cricket won’t face
Cricket behaves like a charity when it spends, but like a business when it selects.
It invests heavily upfront, yet plans as if that investment disappears the moment a player exits the junior pathway.
That contradiction forces boards into short-term thinking, constant funding stress, and repeated dependence on grants, sponsors, or emergency support.
It also creates tension between players and administrators later, because the system has no honest way of acknowledging who paid for what.
The real question
What if cricket stopped pretending this was free?
What if it accepted that development is a form of human capital investment and designed a system that reflects that reality without exploiting players or restricting careers?
That’s where the conversation needs to go next.
In Part 3, I’ll look at a model outside cricket that already solves this problem and ask whether the game is brave enough to adapt it.
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