Dear Sports Editor,
There is absolutely no doubt that West Indies cricket has deteriorated and instead of getting better, it is getting worse. The reasons are numerous, but international commentators have attributed the decline to failure of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) to move the game from an amateur part time to a professional sport coupled with the general economic decline in the Caribbean.
I will add to that by blaming the authorities for not selecting the best team and in order to do so there must be competent and impartial selectors. I strongly feel that the selection panel should be past experienced players like Sir Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Curtley Ambrose etc. Frankly speaking I do not think that Clyde Butts is the right person to head the selection panel, although he was a successful regional spin bowler.
It saddens me about the state of affairs in our cricket. Windies won the first two World Cup tournaments in 1975 and 1979 and was the runner up in 1983. We also won the ICC competition in 2004 and the World Twenty/20 in 2012, and there are 17 West Indians in the Hall of fame including Sobers, Gibbs, Headley, Lara, Lloyd, Marshal, Roberts, Kanhai, Kallicharran, Weekes, Worrell, Walcott, Ambrose, Holding, Walsh, Garner and Richards and soon or later Chanderpaul and Gayle would be included in the prestigious group.
One wonders if the current captain Darren Julius Garvey Sammy is the correct person to lead the squad. In fact many feel that he should not even be in the team. He played 35 tests and scored less than 1200 runs at an average of 21 and in ODIs he has a little over 1300 runs to his credit in his 103 ODIs averaging a little over 21 also. He claimed 77 Test wickets and 74 in ODIs…not good enough to be a certainty in the team.
The selectors made a big blunder in naming the team to India. It is unbelievable that the mystery spinner Sunil Narine was not in the squad or Jamaican Nikita Miller to assist Shane Shillingford who bowled his heart out delivering 46 overs of the 104 bowled in the match.
I cannot see why the selectors do not name our best batsman, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, in the One Day games, stating that he is not aggressive enough to play the shorter version of the game. This is rubbish. In the first innings in the test in India, he struck the second delivery he faced for a six, and he scored the third fastest century in the history of test cricket.
The selectors keep changing the team so often that it is difficult to keep up with the names of the players and there are far too many so called officials in the touring party in the like of assistant coach, strength and conditioning co-ordinator, and massage therapist. Commentators also feel that Head Coach Ottis Gibson is not the correct person for the job. Besides his inability as a coach, his relationship with the players is not the best.
Former Jamaican Prime Minister, PJ Patterson, a cricket enthusiast, had carried out an Inquiry about West Indies cricket, and I am not sure whether his recommendations were ever adopted. Something must be done as quickly as possible to bring back the West Indies to the glory days.
Oscar Ramjeet
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