Findlay Defends 'A' Team Picks

Chairman of the West Indies? selectors, Mike Findlay, has stoutly defended a number of surprise selections in the ?A? Team, which will tour Ireland, England and Canada from June 10 to August 9.

In announcing a 14-member squad on Monday, the selectors fast-tracked teenaged trio Dwayne Bravo and Lendl Simmons of Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaican opener Donovan Pagon for the two-month trip which includes matches against Ireland, Sri Lanka, India, a number of county teams and Canada.

The trio were all members of the West Indies Under-19 World Cup team which went to New Zealand in January and were preferred to other young talented players such as Antiguan Sylvester Joseph, Jamaican Ricardo Powell, Trinidadian Imran Jan and Barbadian Kurt Wilkinson.

"The West Indies ?A? team is always a developmental tour and is becoming more acute now because previously when you have touring teams either in the Caribbean or overseas, you played a number of either State, County, or territorial matches.

"These have been cut out now because of the nature of international tours so more and more we have to depend on the ?A? team tours to blood or develop our players," Findlay said.

"We examined the situation (and) we thought that these players showed a tremendous amount of potential. They might not (have) played very many Busta matches; they played for the West Indies at the Under-19 level," Findlay contended.

"They have potential, we are looking at the future. We are developing young players. It doesn?t mean to say we are not considering the names (Joseph, Wilkinson and Powell) mentioned," Findlay said.

But we just thought that these players are showing enough potential and they are young enough for us to develop them at this stage on a tour like that," Findlay contended.

The Findlay-led selection panel also invested in three young speedsters in Tino Best of Barbados and Jamaica?s promising duo Jermaine Lawson and Darren Powell.

With the trio being joined by the more experienced Reon King and Marlon Black, no room was found for a number of bowlers who are not considered out-and-out fast bowlers such as Kerry Jeremy of the Leeward Islands.

This prompted the question whether there is a future in West Indies cricket for Jeremy, who has been the most successful fast bowler in the Busta Cup in the last three years with over 80 wickets at around 20.00 runs.

"It?s hard to answer that question now if you see a future in any player because you would notice from what we?ve been doing, sometimes a player gets dropped and he recharges his batteries and he?s been named again," Findlay said.

"What we?ve done here is to look at the players who we thought had the longer period, especially in the fast bowling. We are looking at fast bowlers now; we are searching for fast bowlers. We therefore opted for the pace - if you looked at the fast bowlers who we have. There are Lawson, Powell, Marlon Black, Reon King and Tino Best. They got a little more pace so we?ve gone for raw pace," declared Findlay.

The selection chief also explained the reason for taking the seasoned King on the tour.

"We thought he fell off for a while. He had some injury coming out of the last tour (Sri Lanka) that he went on. He did show in the Busta Cup that he wasn?t quite ready but we still think he has some talent; so therefore we thought we?ll let him go on this developmental tour," Findlay said.

Similarly with Black. Black looks to us like an investment because he has some pace. He still has to work a lot on his cricket and again we decided to use him on that tour to see how much we can get out of him in terms of development," Findlay remarked.

When quizzed about the omission of Barbadian left-arm seamer Ian Bradshaw and Trinidadian fast medium bowler Darryl Brown, Findlay made it clear that the selectors "are looking for pace".

"Both Brown and Bradshaw haven?t got the pace of those I?ve spoken about. Bradshaw, maybe able to bat better but we went for pace because our critical point now is to get fast bowlers," Findlay said.

Findlay also explained the rationale for selecting just one wicketkeeper in Jamaican Keith Hibbert.

"The thing you have to ask yourself, is there is another ?keeper you can take on that tour? We examined the question of ?keepers in the Caribbean. As you know, I?ve said this, time and time again, that we are concerned about the long-term future of the wicket-keeping situation.

"We did identify two players who we thought had the potential, Wayne Phillip and Hibbert, who is on the team. Phillips has not played this year in the Busta series because of the structure of the Windwards? team vis-?-vis Junior Murray.

"Unfortunate, he (Phillip) has some problems he has to work out also and as we looked at the other ?keepers, we did not see, to be truthful, a specialist 'keeper who we can be looked at as long-term and we therefore thought that we should go with one ?keeper and used a utility person if anything happens to relieve the ?keeper (Hibbert)," Findlay noted.

"That person will be Simmons, who is a utility player. He can bowl and he can also keep so he will be the reserve ?keeper, as it were, on that tour and those are the basic facts behind that," added Findlay.

SOURCE: GUYANA CHRONICLE.