A whole new cricket team
published: Friday | April 25, 2003
THE EDITOR, Sir:
UNLESS AND until we select a West Indies team based on ability, talent and merit, we will never reach the pinnacle in our cricket as we did during 1950s to 1990s nor will be able to defeat the Australians. The West Indies do have talented cricketers but we also have incompetent selectors.
We have demoralised Samuels and Lawson after they performed excellently against India by omitting them in all but one meaningless match in the last World Cup. We continue to play Pedro Collins even though he is an under-achiever who is nicely described as 'medium to sweet' by a Barbadian fan. Wavell Hinds should join Pedro Collins and watch from the sidelines, another failure who has no technique.
I would like to see Tino Best and Lawson opening our attack along with Powell and Taylor. The current crop of fast bowlers are tired, old and slow. Furthermore, Vivian Richards said that we play 'Horses for courses' when he tried to justify the selection of McLean in the World Cup squad. How come he has not played one specialist spinner in the first two test matches versus Australia? It seems that the Australians know our 'courses' better than us especially when they have such a good fast bowling attack and still played two specialist spinners. Our opening attack with the exception of Lawson, is too slow and has no fire, yet we are reluctant to drop one of these medium pacers.
The good West Indian cricketers are able to perform in any country or any course. Picking teams based on the 'course' is an English method of selection and it has proven to be a failure. One of our major problems is that we do not nurture our young cricketers and do not prepare them for the future. We expect them to be perfect and not make mistakes. Finally, we are losing cricket matches because we have square pegs in round holes.
