Is West Indies Test cricket doomed?

Clive Lloyd leaves no doubt over where he stands on T20 cricket.

As West Indies were trounced by an innings inside three days in the two Tendulkar farewell Tests in India in November 2013, the former captain commented that they "looked drunk on T20".

Last week, as new chairman of selectors, Lloyd contended that T20 had "messed up West Indies cricket". Playing Tests for West Indies, he said, no longer seemed a paramount goal for players.

There are obvious reasons.

Players can read the certain signs that Test cricket for West Indies is in its last throes, evidenced by the results over the past two decades and in the markedly dwindling attendances. The upshot is that they regard T20 as the game of the future.

For some, if not all, it is also undoubtedly a matter of money and how much of it they can make in the two vastly different versions. For others it is a response to them being pigeonholed as limited-overs specialists by previous selection panels.

Certainly Kieron Pollard, who is yet to be picked for Tests seven years after his first-class debut, has repeatedly pleaded for an opportunity to test himself at that level; now 27, he is unlikely to get it.