From the get go let’s just say that being a selector is not an easy job. It is an unenviable job in some respects as it attracts a level of criticism whenever teams are selected. It’s often a case of damned if you did and damned if you didn’t.
Having said that one of the main reasons why West Indies cricket continues to languish at the bottom or near bottom of world cricket is because of the failure of the various selection panels to select the best possible teams.
While West Indies selection panels are given a mandate to select the players who merit selection by their performances more often than not they do the opposite.
It appears that some selection panels feel as if their job is to select whomever they want to and then try to justify those selections with feeble excuses.
The problem is that the West Indies selectors are accountable to perhaps only the board which selected them in the first place and which has to sign off or ratify the teams selected.
Because the West Indies selectors are paid and perhaps handsomely too, they should face the axe when their selections do not pan out. In short they should be fired.
This selection panel of Roger Harper, Miles Bascomb and Coach Phil Simmons, continues to insult the intelligence of the West Indies fans, former players, even the players themselves with their trite excuses why certain players were not selected. It is an affront to all.
Players who perform have a right to be selected and players who fail to perform should make way for others to get a chance it’s as simple as that.
Perhaps there is need to change the process whereby players are selected using a process that rewards performance instead of mediocrity or insularity.
It boggles the mind that the West Indies selectors schedule practice matches and then refuse to select players who have performed at those matches.
Or in this present case, players who would have performed in the current Caribbean Premier League found that their performances were not good enough for them to be selected even as others were.
Maybe it’s time to overhaul the present selection process.
Cricket West Indies can go two routes. They can either sack the current panel and replace them with a new panel that must itself go through a rigorous testing procedure or they can change the present outdated model and replace it with one more suited to today’s needs.
This present panel is good at coming up with excuses but the West Indian public does not want excuses. It wants results.
It is time to demand that the best players be selected. The public knows who those players are. So should the selectors because the players’ results speak for themselves.
Sometimes one gets fed up of the nonsense that is sprouted whenever the selection of representative sports teams in Third World Countries and especially here in Guyana take place.
Maybe it’s time that more scrutiny be placed on the present selection panel such as the duration and financial details of their contracts so that region would know how much longer they have to put up with them.
Perhaps the easiest thing would be to pay this present panel to just go away for the betterment of West Indies cricket but one should not be surprised if the selection panel gets a ringing endorsement from Cricket West Indies shortly.
In closing, even a successful title defence will do nothing to absolve this selection panel of the injustices they have meted out to those deserving players who were not selected on the T20 World Cup squad.
