WICB reject new U-23 selection plan

BRIDGETOWN: The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has taken yet another recommendation from their cricket committee and tossed it in the wastepaper basket.

The latest rejection centres around a suggestion to give the junior selection panel ‘first pick’ of Under-23 players for the forthcoming Carib Beer regional tournament. Instead, the WICB directors threw out the recommendation and reverted to the old policy of territories ‘protecting’ certain young players. According to information reaching Caribbean Cric-ket.com, the cricket committee agreed that it was a counter-productive policy for territories to select Under-23 players and then leave them out of their final XI for Carib Cup games. “These youngsters need to be playing cricket. It makes no sense to have the youths picked for their countries and then left out of the final eleven for the entire season. What’s the use in that?” said one member of the WICB cricket committee.

The committee — which includes Mike Findlay (chairman), Sir Viv Richards, Jackie Hendricks, Sir Everton Weekes, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Bryan Davis, Clyde Butts and Ann Browne-John - wanted the ‘B’ team for this year’s Carib Beer competition to be picked before the regional squads. “The plan was for the junior selection panel to work with the senior selectors to pick the ‘B’ team first. That way, we get a competitive squad with players that the (senior) selectors could get a good look at...But it (the suggestion) ran into problems at the board,” the committee member lamented.

According to another source, the WICB directors weren’t happy with a policy that would rob the regional teams of some of their best players. For instance, senior West Indies players Ramnaresh Sarwan, Marlon Samuels, Chris Gayle, Jerome Taylor, Fidel Edwards, Ravi Rampaul, Omari Banks and Carlton Baugh would possibly be available for the ‘B’ team under the cricket committee’s recommendation. For the forthcoming tournament, that was not much of an issue since the West Indies players would be away on tour until the last two rounds of the Carib Beer Cup competition. Another source said the cricket committee’s recommendation was viewed as an attempt by the selectors to give Sarwan some captaincy experience. “The Guyana situation with (Shivnarine) Chanderpaul as captain means that Sarwan will never get captaincy experience with his home team. If he’s the West Indies vice captain and he’s in training for the future captaincy, he needs to get some on-field experience,” he added.

For the 2004 Carib Beer Cup tournament, the ‘B’ team will be made up only of Under-23 players not named in a territorial squad. “The ‘B’ team conflict is symptomatic of why we are so slow to move up the ladder of international competitiveness. We need a ‘farming’ system which has our best young players 19 to 25 being actively prepared to move up to international level,” said one WICB source.  “We have been throwing too many players in to the deep end at this level without a reasonable amount of preparation. Our management team then have to spend more time nursing and teaching than analysing and planning strategy and tactics,” he added. The cricket committee has been complaining for several years that its recommendations have never received approval/backing from the board of directors. Former WICB president Wes Hall was a member of the committee and even he could not get recommendations past the board.