West Indies legend Clive Lloyd does not believe discarded batsman Shai Hope should be playing T20 cricket as the sport's shortest format ruins his game.
After a barren run of form, which has led to the player averaging 19.48 since December 2017 and just 14.45 since February 2019, Hope was dropped from the team ahead of the upcoming tour of New Zealand. Not surprisingly, since his struggles in a 2-1 defeat against England, a place where he made headlines three years ago, saw his overall Test average slip to 26.27.
“I don’t think this T20 is for Shai Hope, he gets into bad habits,” Lloyd told the Mason and Guest radio program.
“I know that you don’t want to take away money from people, but the point is that he should not be playing in T20s, it is destroying his cricket,” he added.
Former West Indies bowler Ian Bradshaw believes WI skipper Jason Holder would be better-suited batting higher up the order but insists the team must solve its stability issues first.
Holder, the top-ranked Test all-rounder in the world, typically bats at 8th. So far, the majority of his contributions have been with the ball, but he has shown he can do plenty of damage for the team with the bat as well.
“I’ve said before he needs to move up the order, eighth and so forth was too low and that was based on the facts, when you look at how well he was batting and his average compared to the rest of the batting unit. He was one of better batsmen so he is a wasted talent batting at eight,” Bradshaw told the Mason and Guest Radio program.
JAMAICA's former National Cricket Coach Junior Bennett says while question marks remain about the West Indies opening position, he is pleased regional selectors have been patient with players struggling for form.
Left-hand opener John Campbell, who tallied only 84 runs in six innings at an average of 16.8 when West Indies lost 1-2 to England in the summer, was named to the 15-man Test squad which leaves for New Zealand this week.
Critics have pointed to Campbell's technical weaknesses against the sideways movement and swing typically on offer in English conditions. They argue that the 27-year-old Jamaican, whose career average is 25.46 after nine Tests, will suffer the same fate in similar conditions down under.
“John struggled in England but it was good to see the selectors giving him another opportunity to prove himself, as personally, I don't like the chop and changing of teams. I am just hoping that John digs deep and makes full use of it,” Bennett told the Jamaica Observer.
Campbell had entered the England series in decent enough form, scoring two centuries while gathering 491 runs at an average of 32.73 in the last regional first-class campaign.
Legendary Australia spinner Shane Warne has claimed West Indies batsman Marlon Samuels needs ‘serious help’ after recent posts that denigrated both the bowler himself and England all-rounder, Ben Stokes.
The comments, which were posted to Samuels’ Instagram page, called Stokes a ‘bitch’ and a ‘white boy’ and also made lewd suggestions regarding the player’s wife. The comments came after Stokes recently revealed his difficult experiences in New Zealand quarantine, which he insisted he would not visit on his worst enemy, 'not even Marlon Samuels'. Stokes and Samuels have been part of a long-running feud that goes back to 2015 but the level of vitriol caught many by surprise.
Warne and Samuels have also had a fierce rivalry over the years but it’s not clear what the trigger was to involve the former spinner this time around. In criticising Warne, Samuels brought up an alleged incident involving a girlfriend of the Australian and claimed he was ‘begging jobs in cricket.’
As Butcher was concluding the events surrounding his application, and subsequent interview for the position of Head Coach of Cricket West Indies, he stated how we ‘move on’ in life, when things do not work out. Which led to him reminiscing on his return to the Caribbean, four years later, as Director of Sports at the University of the West Indies in Barbados.
Krissania: Yes, I was just about to ask you to expound on the high-performance program that you developed at the UWI.
Roland: “In 2004, I was given the position of Director of Sports, at the University of West Indies, with the mandate of professionalizing sports at the university. Which was on a very amateur basis; there was no Sports Department. Basically, sports at the university was run by the students, there was no professional expertise available. I came in as the Director and then I had to start all the structures to ensure that we could get professional programs at the university. As well as getting structures in place, I then had to get the requisite facilities to go with the sports. When I came to the university, the few coaches that did coaching for the school were alumni or people who wanted to give back [to the university]. It was very disorganized, so one of the first things that I did was to ensure that we got the best coaches in each sport and they were given contracts for their services.
