The former great, now legendary, West Indies wicket-keeper batsman Deryck Murray recently added his voice to the seemingly unending list of those who have publicly expressed their disagreement with the 2021 T20 Squad choices made by the West Indies Selectors. While doing so Murray has also wisely suggested, however, that the time has now come for us all to move on from agonizing over the spilled milk of the selectors’ highly questionable choices, towards the far more positively inclined focus of providing the chosen squad with our collective, unhesitating, support.
We are in full agreement with Murray’s avocation that the chosen 2021 T20 World Cup squad should now receive our unqualified support, as well as our very best wishes for its every success during the forthcoming tournament. Having now voiced our agreement we must, however, also suggest that it now behooves Cricket West Indies to immediately engage itself in implementing the blatantly obviously required reforms to the practices procedures, and policies of its selection panel. That much is now urgently required, as a means of ensuring that a spill of such colossal proportions as was recently experienced is not ever repeated.
Foremost among the policies now
obviously in need of desperate reform would be that of the fitness standards. As numerous former players have suggested the duplicity of allowing some players to be granted fitness exemptions, while others are deemed to have failed to meet the required standards has to be placed where it rightfully belongs, at the very top of the pile of discarded practices.
Henceforth, the established fitness standard should be one and the same for all, without compromise. All players must meet the established standard in order to become eligible for selection. Conversely, the failure by any player to meet the established standard should automatically result in his or her, immediate disqualification from selection eligibility. No exemptions to be allowed to anyone, whatsoever!
As a means of ensuring that the required fitness standards are being met and maintained by all players, Cricket West Indies should also establish a testing frequency timetable that clearly specifies how often tests will be conducted each year. Whether the decided timing is for tests to be conducted once, twice, thrice or even four times each year, it must be crystal clear to every player desirous of being selected to West Indies teams how often they will have to be tested to determine their eligibility.
The ultra importance of player fitness has been advocated by no less than the legendary former West Indies fast bowling great, Michael Holding. In a Guides To Greatness interview that was recently featured in WI Wickets cricket magazine’s inaugural August 2021 Issue, Holding suggested that it was no mere coincidence that the Dennis Waight fitness-trained West Indies team of which he was a key member, and which under Clive Lloyd’s and subsequently Viv Richards’ leadership ruled world cricket having played unbeaten for 15 years, was also arguably that much fitter than any of its opponents.
With regards to those now sadly distant past halcyon days of West Indies cricket world dominance, it is also worth remembering that the West Indies selection panels back then was actually comprised of five voting selectors, not just three as it is currently. The selection panel’s numerical composition should, therefore, be another area worthy of Cricket West Indies’ reconsideration, if not immediate reform.
As a means of ensuring that the most talented, adequately prepared, players are readily available for selection, Cricket West Indies should also engage in the establishment of talent pool camps in as many of the associated disciplines as possible. Separate camps should be held for our opening and middle-order batsmen, wicket-keepers, spinners, and fast bowlers.
The services of such former greats as Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Sir Vivian Richards, and Brian Lara should be engaged within the batting camps. Deryck Murray and Jeffrey Dujon could similarly conduct the wicket-keepers’ camp. And although he is now well into his late eighties, Lance Gibbs remains as one of the very few world class-spinners the West Indies has ever produced. Fortunately he is still among us and sufficiently active as to be of immense consultative value to our existing, much younger practitioners of spin.
Fortunately, there is now no such dearth in the availability of those worthy of managing any such camp for fast bowlers. Sir Andy Roberts, Sir Curtly Ambrose, Joel Garner, even Ian Bishop in between his seemingly unending assignments as a much-wanted cricket television commentator, could be available to manage a skills and fitness refinement camp for our most promising fast bowlers.
The foregoing are only some of the top-line reforms that are most urgently in need of Cricket West Indies’ almost immediate implementation. Given the unprecedented extent of the most recent ICC T20 World Cup selections fiasco, as well as the widespread resulting indignation it caused throughout the Caribbean and beyond to the Diaspora, there may most likely be others.
Not unlike everyone else we will now wait, as patiently as possible, to see exactly what Cricket West Indies’ public reaction to its now blatantly obvious selections related inadequacies will be. While doing so we should again and indeed, as Deryck Murray has suggested, also direct our energies, prayers, and very best wishes to our West Indies team’s success at the forthcoming World Cup. Here’s to their retention of the trophy and to all of us being able of granting them a most deserving hero’s welcome, as still reigning champions, when they return home in mid-November!
About The Writers:
Guyana-born, Toronto-based, Tony McWatt now serves as Cricket Canada’s Media Relations Manager. He is the Publisher of both the WI Wickets and Wickets monthly online cricket magazines that are respectively targeted towards Caribbean and Canadian readers. He is also the only son of the former Guyana and West Indies wicket-keeper batsman the late Clifford “Baby Boy” McWatt.
Guyana-born Reds (Perreira) has served as a world-recognized West Indies Cricket Commentator for well over fifty years now. Reds made his broadcasting debut during the 1971 West Indies-India Test Series, and has commentated on hundreds of matches since then!
