Lame Duck Selectors Wronged Jeremy & Garrick

The lame-duck West Indian selectors met over the weekend during the fourth test in Antigua, for what could possibly be one of their last meetings to name an A team that will tour England and Canada later this summer.

It has taken this group of selectors five years to finally get a representative team partly right. And I say partly right because they have still retained the annoying proclivity to leave the fans scratching their heads across the region.

The selectors named a squad of 14, and for the sake of this article, I'll reprint them here.

Daren Ganga (provisional captain)
Sulieman Benn
Tino Best
Marlon Black
Dwayne Bravo
Gareth Breese
Keith Hibbert
Reon King
Jermaine Lawson
Runako Morton
Donovon Pagon
Darren Powell
Lendl Simmons
Devon Smith

They have also said that two others will be chosen from the trio of Chris Gayle, Ryan Hinds and Wavell Hinds to join the team after the New Zealand mini-tour is complete. And, here it gets a bit more complicated: "if" Wavell Hinds is one of the two, he will assume the captaincy over Ganga, who is merely the "provisional" captain.

It is here that I begin to take issue with the selectors and the WICB. Why not, for the sake of continuity, name Ganga as the captain for the full tour? Is it that they have no faith in Ganga's leadership abilities? Or that they are grooming Hinds as a future West Indies captain? If the latter is the case, then is this some new bit of inspiration about a player who wasn't even able to cement his place in the team after promising much as man-of-the-series in 2000 against Pakistan. The same Hinds who was then seemingly so conspired against by poor umpiring and the tough overseas tours, that he has only now found his way back to the test team after the disaster in Sharjah, having to wait until such pretenders like Stuart Williams proved that his supposed improved technique was merely a mirage.

Another missing notable Leon Garrick. Here is a player who at one point was being touted, along with fellow Jamaican Chris Gayle, as being the opening pair of the future. However, the selectors' persistence in the aforementioned Ganga, and an inopportune heart ailment along with indifferent form in the Busta Cup seems to have robbed this young man of his international career. I'm sure that Garrick must be wondering what else he has to do to get a look having been given one test match against South Africa, has not come close to a first team slot since and now cannot make it into an 'A' team. Strange things are happening.

And what about Ian Bradshaw, the left-arm all-rounder from Barbados?. Bradshaw took 31 wickets in this years Busta tournament, and wields a good enough bat to have taken a century off England "A" in last years Busta competition. No place for him either, but at least they are having another look at Reon King, who is still arguably the fastest of the West Indies quicks, and not so quicks. Unlike his countryman Pedro Collins, Bradshaw's left-arm can't seem to help him get into this team.

Of the quicks, King, Lawson and Powell pick themselves, and Best seems to have made it in on pure raw pace and potential. He certainly set tongues wagging across the region with his speed and enthusiasm, and even the short-sighted Barbadian selectors, who dropped him during the Busta, could not keep this young man out of contention. It is a great pity, that he could not have been selected to play for the Busta XI against India, to see if he really had the goods, and maybe put a scare in the Indians ahead of the Barbados test.

I am sure that not since 1971, no Indian team has had as easy a time against the Caribbean quicks as this one, Kumble excepted.

There are two spinners in Benn and Breese, the latter who was almost surely considering retirement after being mauled by Carl Hooper in the Busta final. Based on pure results these two do not seem to be anything special, but they do have some pretensions towards being all-rounders and I guess that should be encouraged. Maybe Garrick could have taken one of those spots. Morton, Bravo Pagon, and the golden boy Smith, make up the rest of the batting, and here, the WI selectors have it dead to rights.

There is nothing like a season in England to tighten technique and add the finishing touches to batsmen. Smith did exceptionally well in the last WI under 19 to England and great things are expected of him. I am sure that he will deliver. He is that good.

The most glaring omission of all though, has to be Kerry Jeremy. Here is a player who has taken more than 80 wickets in three years of first class competition, second only to Mahendra Nagamootoo. And he goes to the Academy instead of to England where the condition ideally suit his style of bowling. He has had to watch his teammate Adam Sanford waltz into the Test team, and yet Jeremy cannot get so much as a look in on the 'A' team.

He has seen marginal performers like Black and Collins get numerous chances, and except for
his aborted tour to Australia, he has not reaped the rewards of his exemplary performances in the Caribbean first class competition. Surely, Jeremy must be contemplating a change of career, or at the very least, a ticket to South Africa and certain exile from West Indies cricket.

The selectors have mostly done a good job with this team, with the glaring exceptions of Jeremy and Garrick, and to a lesser extent Bradshaw. However, we cannot expect perfection from a group that has foisted Darrell Brown upon us and allowed Wayne Phillip to disappear from view.