Improving the standards in club cricket on and off the pitch will be one of the Bermuda Cricket Board’s major goals in 2015.

The BCB’s strategic review has highlighted several areas that need immediate improvement, with clubs and communication topping that list.

An anonymous survey of 25 club officials, conducted by independent consultant Judy Sutcliffe, also identified organisation and player development as areas of concern.

“We know there are clubs that do well domestically that don’t have a youth programme, and that can never be right and we want to fix that,” Neil Speight, the BCB’s chief executive, said.

“We want to improve the governance side of it, we hope we can help the clubs run themselves better.”

The need to focus on clubs was highlighted by the survey results, which pointed to the fact that people were more concerned with the domestic game, than how the senior team does in Malaysia, for example. Which is not to say that there are not things the BCB should be doing better, there are, and the respondents to the survey were not shy about pointing that out.

“People are fairly good at telling you the areas for improvement,” Speight said.

Certainly some club officials believe there is a disconnect between the clubs and their Board, while the more cynical among them dismiss the strategic review, and the several International Cricket Council Development Awards the Board has won over the years as “nothing more than corporate box-ticking.”

A view that could be considered unfair, if not for the steady and largely unchecked decline of the national cricket team since 2005.

Those disillusioned officials point to the high attrition rate between the number of young people playing the game at ages eight through 14, and the number that actually make it into senior league cricket.

However, clubs, who continue to pick players who do not train or are poorly behaved on the pitch, bare some of the responsibility for that, according to Speight, and he hopes the focus on club development will slowly change that mindset.

“We won’t change that overnight,” Speight said. “I have always felt that until we can raise the level of the performance of our coaches, and the surrounding support structures, we won’t get rid of those behaviours.

“It comes down to standards. Part of our education and our growing process, when we talk about club development, those are the sorts of things that we’re specifically talking about.

“It’s not just off the field, it’s on the field too.”

Measuring success on the field is far easier than off it, but Tom Humphries, the ICC Americas Regional Development Officer, knows the two go “hand-in-hand.

“If you can set up a strong domestic structure, good coaches, strong administration, you’re going to put yourself in the best position to achieve that international success,” he said.

“While not discounting an immediate focus on high performance, if you can get all those processes, and all those structures right, you will be successful internationally.”

The goals the BCB identified during its latest review are a combination of the focus on the domestic game, and the acknowledgment that improving on the international stage in the short-term is just as important.

“We know that we want the senior team to be ranked higher than it is now. We know that we want to qualify for an under-19 World Cup, we know that we want more playing numbers,” Speight said.

“Every year I see clubs that end up with 30 people on their roster, and after a month you have a bunch of disillusioned people who aren’t playing cricket, there must be a way we can counter that.”

Internationally, however, the Board still faces the challenge of getting some clubs, and players, to accept that the national team is more important than Cup Match, or a county game. It is not a problem Speight believes can be fixed completely

“Part of it is national pride, we’ve always had an issue with getting all the best domestic players out playing for the country,” he said.

“It’s a good news, bad news thing. Bermuda has Cup Match, and Eastern County, and cricket is woven into the culture, so everyone gets excited by it, and you have people gravitating to the game.”

The strategic review, which took place over two days, did highlight certain things that caught Humphries’s eye and further served to emphasise the ICC’s belief that Bermuda is worthy of the global governing body’s support and help.

Humphries pointed to the Island’s strong group of volunteers, officials that care about the game, and the talented players that Bermuda undoubtedly has.