Ian Bishop insists West Indies has captaincy ‘decision to make' ahead of next summer’s Tests
Former West Indies fast bowler Ian Bishop says the next five months could be a defining period for head coach Daren Sammy and Test captain Roston Chase. Bishop’s comments follow a frustrating all-format tour of New Zealand, where the West Indies managed one T20I win and a Test draw while being swept in the One-Day Internationals.
“Roston, by his own admission, has struggled big time with the bat,” Bishop told i955 FM. “And it still sort of bemuses me that a guy who can score five hundreds in his first twenty or so Test matches has reached this point in his career at age 33, where he's struggling to put even moderate innings together.”
The West Indies will remain out of the Test arena until they host Sri Lanka in June 2026. The idle period, according to Bishop, presents them with enough time to review Chase’s role and subsequent place in the side.
“The West Indies are fortunate,” he said, “in that they have five or six months before their next Test series to try to determine whether Roston is capable, first of all, of holding his place in the team and whether he can continue [as captain]. So that's their decision to make.”
Cricket West Indies’ Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Chris Dehring expects regional cricket’s attempt to adapt to inevitable shifts in the sport’s ecosystem will lead to a decline in the frequency with which teams such as the Leeward Islands and Windward Islands compete as multinational outfits. Dehring highlighted that the introduction of cricket at the Pan American Games and its reintroduction to the Olympics, where only sovereign nations can compete, will see an increase in the number of games contested by individual territories.
“If you think about Pan American Games qualifications every two years and Olympic Games qualifications thrown into the mix, you can see a different cadence of cricket taking place in the Caribbean over the next five, 10, 15, or 20 years,” Dehring told the Mason and Guest panel.
“And of course, individual countries are who play in those tournaments. So it won't necessarily be Leewards and Windwards. It will be St. Vincent, Dominica, Antigua, Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad & Tobago competing to qualify now for a bigger prize.”
He, however, insists the changing events should not be feared but rather embraced. Dehring hopes the inherent nationalism attached to participating in these tournaments will push regional governments to pour more resources into the sport.
Poor personal form and a winless run have left Chase nowhere to hide
“I think I had a tough series, very below par for my standard. I didn't really lead from the front on the field. Leading, in terms of words and encouraging and inspiring the team, was all good, but in terms of going out there and producing and letting the team have someone to look up to as a leader, I let myself and the team down.”
That was the self-assessment delivered by captain Roston Chase following West Indies’ 2-0 loss in their three-match Test series against New Zealand. Chase finished the tour with a batting average of 7.0 and a high score of 29.
The 33-year-old’s criticism of his performance was preceded by that of head coach Daren Sammy, who, ahead of the 3rd Test, argued that “runs not coming from [our] number seven and five” was a potential injury trigger for bowlers. While showing appreciation to his bowlers, Sammy chided the Windies batters for not spending enough time at the crease.
Unlike Chase’s suggestion, however, his poor output predates the just-concluded series. The Barbadian has scored 221 runs across 16 innings since being drafted back into the Test side as skipper.
New Zealand 575 for 8 dec. & 306 for 2 dec. (Latham 101, Conway 100, Ravindra 46*, Hodge 2-80) beat West Indies 420 & 138 (King 67, Campbell 16, Imlach 15*, Duffy 5-42) by 323 runs
The West Indies’ three-match Test series against New Zealand ended with as much despair as it began with promise. With all ten second-innings wickets still intact, the visitors entered the day with a realistic hope of earning a draw. They were instead rolled over for 138 and subjected to a crushing 323-run defeat, handing the hosts a 2-0 series win.
They lost 5 wickets for 11 runs to be restricted to 99 for 5 at the lunch interval. The opening pair of John Campbell and Brandon King added 44 runs before variable bounce came into play on the fifth-day wicket. King continued his quick scoring from the previous day, bringing up his fifty in 63 balls. Campbell too seemed intent on blocking, as he had done late on Day 4.
They were eventually dismissed in consecutive overs. King fell to a Jacob Duffy short ball for 67 before Campbell (16) fell victim to the aggression he’d suppressed the entire innings and was caught going for a big shot off the orthodox spin of Ajaz Patel.
Cricket West Indies has confirmed that the second season of the Caribbean Premier League-sanctioned Breakout T20 League has been postponed, although there are still plans for the competition to be contested in 2026. Board Vice-President Azim Bassarath had recently announced that the competition would be contested in Trinidad and Tobago from January 24 to February 8. However, CWI now insists “the tournament cannot be staged in its originally planned window.”
With the ICC Men’s Under-19 and 2026 Men’s T20 World Cups set to be contested across the first three months of the year, CWI has pointed to an “increasingly congested international and domestic cricket calendar” as the reason for the delay.
Chief Executive Officer Chris Dehring said, “With the Under-19 Men’s and Senior Men’s teams focused on upcoming World Cups, this is an especially demanding period for our players. While the Breakout League remains part of our forward planning, it will not be staged in the same window. We will continue to look for a space for this event in 2026.”
Dehring has, however, reaffirmed CWI’s committed investment to the success of the league. “While we have not yet identified a suitable window for the Breakout League in 2026, it remains an important pillar of our domestic tournament strategy,” he said.
