Solomon Sides With Hooper

Former Guyana and West Indies batsman Joe Solomon has come out in support of countryman Carl Hooper who recently lashed out at the practice facilities for Zone B of the Red Stripe Bowl in St. Lucia, where the Guyanese, Antigua, Canada, the Windward Islands and Trinidad and Tobago battled for a place in the semi finals.

Solomon, chairman of the Guyana Cricket Board's senior selection panel, also took a swipe at regional administrators who, he said could travel all over the region to witness Test matches but could only make phone calls when the time came to make important decisions.

Hooper, captain of Guyana and the West Indies teams, had said at the start of the tournament that after two days the Guyanese had been unable to get a net session because of the poor practice facilities. He said then it was "really disappointing and frustrating" and admonished regional cricket administrators for not making sure practice facilities are up to the required standard.

The West Indies captain said, "we are supposed to be making strides forward but we are not going anywhere. It is probably getting worse".

"Everyone wants to kick the cricketers when they are not doing well but it starts at the the top."

Hooper also said it is time for people to be held accountable when they don't do their job in the same way that "you want to make cricketers accountable for their failures".

"What is worrying is that the World Cup is just a few months away and more importantly, the ICC Trophy starts the minute this Red Stripe Bowl is over".

According to Solomon, the WICB should pay attention to Hooper's complaints.

"This is a tournament where we are looking to select players for the next World Cup and the ICC, and they should be practicing on good pitches. That's the only way they can show their true talent."

A clearly upset Solomon continued, "we have a lot of people on the Board who are supposed to look at these things. I know they always go to Test matches but they need to look at facilities for the regional matches. This is where the players come out from."

While noting that teams struggled to reach 200 in the St. Lucia zone (Trinidad and Antigua both scored just over that), Solomon said bowlers get bad pitches and they feel on top of the world but when they get better tracks they don't know how to bowl on them.

"If you give the players good pitches their standard would improve."

"Hooper is in order to say what he said, since he as captain he is looking forward to playing on good pitches and to select good players. When things go wrong the captain gets all the blame."

This is not the first time Hooper has lamented the region's poor facilities, doing so some years before his retirement from international cricket in 1999.

The West Indies, once undisputed World Champions in both forms of the game, now languish in sixth place in the Test and One-Day International standings.

* Donovan Matthews is a cricket journalist based in Georgetown, Guyana.