Dear Editor,
It was always predictable that the attempt of some Caricom leaders to engender radical changes in the formidable WICB would peter out, as only a few of those moderately popular leaders were keenly interested in the arcane subject of cricket governance, and whatever interest there was, emanated almost solely from the circumstance that the team had been losing for so long.
It is also significant that the investigation into outside interference in selection centred on the forty-year-old super batsman Shiv Chanderpaul, when the real issue was the exclusion of Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard, two impact players, requested by Captain, Head Coach and Chairman of Selectors, from the fifty over 2015 Word Cup squad, obviously a subject too fraught with danger for the WICB.
The immediate challenge, however, is how to prepare the well-selected T/Twenty team for the upcoming World Cup which was won by them in 2012, and which, based on pre-game statistics may well have been won by them in 2014 were it not for the intervention of rain in their semi-final against Sri Lanka, the team they defeated in 2012. In passing, it is useful to reflect on the reasoning that justifies the inclusion in one form of the game, of players who are persona non grata in another form of the game.
Unfortunately, through unthinking media commentaries, several of the members of the chosen team are unpopular in the region as they have been so frequently described as greedy and unpatriotic for having accepted offers of huge sums of money that most of the critics themselves would find impossible to reject, to play professional twenty over cricket in India and other foreign countries.Their records, however, clearly demonstrate that they have what it takes to win. People who are despised and know they are despised often, if only because they are human, tend to suffer a loss of confidence. They fear failure much more than those who are seen as decent. Such confidence is absolutely essential to winning big competitions, especially those requiring aggressive risk-taking.
How to get the team into a confident frame of mind is the biggest challenge facing management. I strongly recommend the retention of professional help, the cost of which should be tolerable for the relatively short period involved.
Yours faithfully,
Romain Pitt
