St John’s, Antigua – The WICB cricket and selection committees met recently to review the performances of players on WICB retainer contracts.

In their review the joint committee effort found that left arm spinner Sulieman Benn and all rounder Darren Sammy were the big performers among the 14 players who hold WICB Central Retainer Contracts for the year October 1, 2009 to September 30, 2010. Benn moved from having taken 29 wickets in the 2008-2009 season to a grand total 40 wickets in the 2009-2010 season in the three forms of the game at the highest level – Tests, One Day Internationals and International Twenty20s.

The Barbadian’s cumulative average also came down significantly from 46.12 runs per wicket in 2008-2009 to 27.7 runs per wicket in 2009-2010.

Sammy increased his wicket haul from 24 wickets to 32 wickets but he made significant progress on improving his average – moving from 53.16 runs per wicket to 29.13 runs per wicket (all three formats of the game).

Chris Gayle’s stats for 2009-2010 remained mostly on par with his stats for the previous year.

Incidentally all three, Benn, Sammy and Gayle have been nominated by the ICC for awards in the LG ICC Awards 2010. Additionally veteran middle order batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Gayle are the only two West Indians ranked in the top ten performers in the world in the ICC rankings for batsmen and bowlers.

Chanderpaul is ranked 5th on the list of top Test batsmen, having slipped from his number one ranking while Gayle is also ranked fifth on the list of top ODI batsmen. Chanderpaul is ranked 10th on the ODI list.

There are no bowlers in the top ten of the Reliance Mobile ICC rankings for Tests or ODIs.

The WICB will be offering 15 players Central Retainer Contracts for the period October 1, 2010 to September 30, 2011 and will also offer ten players Developmental Contracts for the same period.

Players currently on WICB Central Retainer Contracts: Dwayne Bravo, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Denesh Ramdin, Darren Sammy, Jerome Taylor, Sulieman Benn, Dave Bernard, Narsingh Deonarine, Travis Dowlin, Brendan Nash, Ravi Rampaul and Kemar Roach.