Dear Editor,
I have never been a supporter of Sammy as captain, but his fans credit him for whatever successes the team has achieved. The fact is that those successes were in spite of Sammy as each player who shone, for whatever time, did so on an individual basis impelled by initial hunger. A good captain would have helped to put mechanisms in place to ensure consistency and advancement by continually focusing on redressing technical flaws and other negatively impacting issues as they come up. Ditto for a good coach. Gibson’s appointment as coach was indicative of the aura of mediocrity that enveloped Windies cricket. And the old boy’s network, which is the board, has been emphatic in ensuring that changes were cosmetic at best, as the Patterson report was shelved, senior players were stymied and management plans for younger talent were conspicuous by their absence. To top it all off selection was muddled and befuddling at best.
Had things been otherwise a current team would have included Jerome Taylor and Fidel Edwards who would, by now, have been breathing fire; Sarwan who would have been just as good as he ever was, if not better; Narine whose absence from the first eleven continues to puzzle the cricket world; Bishoo who would have become even better than when he first stormed the cricketing world; and Dwayne Bravo who would have been exploiting his potential as game-changing all-rounder, as probably would have Kieron Pollard.
Sammy would never have earned a Test place and Ramdin would either have stepped up his game and keeping, or been replaced by some hungry youngsters intensely working to elevate his keeping and batting.
Yes every team moves from the peak to the valley, but no team has remained in the valley this long. It is time for the administrators to display cricketing acuteness, for Sammy and Gibson to go, for some of the Windies greats to be brought in to help out, for a management plan to be in place to develop talent and build stamina and endurance, for merit to be the critical criteria for selection and for players to be given enough time to bed themselves in, as other Test teams do on a regular basis. Discipline has to return, commitment has to be instilled, pride must once again become the order of the day and perhaps Chanderpaul should be asked to work with the team to let them know and understand how to put a premium on their batting and their bowling. Above all else administrators must realize that they are not the stars of our cricket but the stewards, tasked on behalf of all West Indians to put cricket first and always.
Yours faithfully,
Annan Boodram