Lloyd Fray believes Bermuda must prepare itself for another eight years of pain on the international cricket stage before the national team is in a position to compete at the highest level again.With a national team in decline and a domestic game that does little to prepare the Island’s players for the demands of Associate cricket, Fray wants to strip down the Bermuda Cricket Board’s approach and start from scratch in a bid to recapture the glory days of the Island’s 2007 World Cup appearance.Central to the new BCB president’s plans are a focus on restructuring domestic cricket from Under-11s through to the elite players, ploughing ahead with a new national academy, and implementing standardised coaching throughout the clubs.Fray will present his ideas to club officials in a series of workshops in January and said that if the Island started straightaway then the results would be seen in six to eight years’ time.“Reaching the World Cup set an expectation but we didn’t have the processes in place to repeat that,” he said. “We have some fragmented pieces but you can’t have that in a small market like Bermuda and keep that expectation.“January is hopefully the beginnings of that. It’s going to be painful, it’s going to be, if we start now, at least six to eight years before we start . . . if we do the things that we’re supposed to, that we start seeing the results.“I’m not just talking about winning, it’s all got to go towards this end game which is years of development that’s going to happen for Bermuda. This is not going to happen overnight, we’re going to work on a long-term plan, but with a rolling plan on how to get there.”Accepting pain doesn’t mean that the national team will be ignored, but Fray said domestic cricket was ‘paramount’ and that discussions over everything from getting the game back into the schools, reducing the Premier Division to six teams, and creating a sustainable elite league, all need to take place.However, the president also knows that his hopes and dreams for the future will come to nothing if the clubs aren’t on board and acknowledge that was an area where the BCB had failed in the past.“I don’t want the Board to be operating in a vacuum, I don’t want to be in a situation where we are looking to be ‘on high’, I want it to be inclusive,” he said.“We’ll start this with workshops in January, that’s where the beginning of this happens. Getting the stratergy out, getting people to understand the format of cricket for the next year, that’s also going to be discussed. It’s about getting the foundation to get people to understand and really buy in to this (plan for) domestic cricket, which is really important for us.”A failure to ‘buy in’ was largely responsible for the failure of the Elite League to take off last season, but Fray is determined to bring back the extra tier to the domestic game and wants to ensure that all the cricket played next season is productive.He also believes that the Board need to introduce some form of incentive for the players, other than a cup, and has suggested that rewarding good performances with a discount on club fees could be something the BCB look at.“In most jurisdictions, they have such a thing (an Elite League), they may call it something else, but it’s the best of the best playing against each other,” he said. “I’m not sure why it didn’t take off last year, I think we need to get people to understand why it’s important to do this.“You can only get better if you are playing against people who are better than you, or on par with you, so that’s why an elite league is critical in terms of the development stage.“There has to be something to get guys involved, from a points system that can translate maybe to a fee structure, so there is a discount on fees, we’ve got to do something. Money isn’t everything, but it does help. There are ways in which we need to be more creative, that’s where we are looking at in the domestic front.”The decision to reduce the top flight to six teams was not universally popular last season, but Fray believes that had more to do with the BCB’s failure to communicate its message than anything else, and with a landslide victory behind him there is reason to believe that the clubs have already partly bought into his vision.“I truly believe that why cricket, in terms of the format that we put in place, hasn’t got the traction is because people don’t quite understand why it’s important,” said Fray.“It’s not just clubs, not just players, I think it’s the Board as well. What we need to do is as a Board bring them to the table, say ‘here’s what we recommend, but we really need your imput.’ No longer can we say ‘we put this in place because it’s a great idea’, it can’t work that way any more.”Ultimately Fray views the Board’s approach in the same way he would any business; with measurable stages of progression leading to an ultimate goal. The hope is that measurable progression will make the painful results on the field more bearable.“These are not overnight fixes,” he said. “We have to start, I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, domestic cricket is paramount. For this to take shape, to get the pool of players that you’re looking for, we’ve got to get those clubs being a part of the process, not against the process.“That is the beginnings of all of this, it is long term. As we get that fixed it’s the building blocks for the national level, because then, I’m not going to say it’s easy, but it (losing) is a lot more palatable.“Just like in any business, it’s in the process. We know we take product from here, to assembly line, to launch, everyone knows what they have to do and that’s what’s happening with cricket.”n Tomorrow, Time for BCB to get involved in Counties mess