Some­thing is wrong, some­thing is amiss, some­thing clear­ly is not what it should at least if you are talk­ing T&T crick­et at the mo­ment .

While the lo­cal courts will prob­a­bly in­flu­ence which group will run crick­et in 2017, there is lit­tle doubt, that the longer the sport re­mains on this path­way, then de­struc­tion and ero­sion of the qual­i­ty along with added shame of the field, will de­scend on all our crick­et. Cer­tain­ly this can­not be what is de­sired by those in au­thor­i­ty.

At this stage of the re­gion­al four-day tour­na­ment, T&T is lan­guish­ing in last place, with a num­ber of de­feats, af­ter win­ning our open­ing match which sug­gest that some­where, some­how, some­thing has gone wrong with­in this team.

In the first place, there is no doubt, that this is not the best T&T team, and we are talk­ing about best avail­able team based on the play­ers who are el­i­gi­ble for se­lec­tion.

But un­less we lose sight of the fail­ing Richard Py­bus Pro­fes­sion­al Crick­et League plans, it would ap­pear that the prob­lems arose with the squad se­lect­ed by T&T. A cur­so­ry glance among the teams in the pre­mier di­vi­sion would raise more ques­tions than an­swers about the pol­i­cy of the T&T se­lec­tors.

It is prob­a­bly no sur­prise to lis­ten to the T&TCB which im­me­di­ate­ly has cast blame on na­tion­al coach, Au­gus­tine Lo­gie. It would ap­pear from all in­di­ca­tions the coach Lo­gie was very in­stru­men­tal in the se­lec­tion of the team, if that is not true and Lo­gie too must de­fend him­self, oth­er­wise his record is be­ing tar­nished on every oc­ca­sion that T&T has failed to date.

It does not help the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, when cer­tain play­ers se­lect­ed have been called in­to ques­tion be­cause of ei­ther fam­i­ly con­nec­tions or lo­cal club con­nec­tions to some of the ex­ec­u­tives of the TTCB.

There is al­so the ob­vi­ous fail­ure of the TTCB, not to re­al­ize that the se­lec­tion of non-T&T play­ers was not work­ing in this tour­na­ment for T&T, as it would ap­pear that there was an ob­vi­ous dis­con­nect among many of the play­ers and a be­lief, that many of the lo­cal play­ers left out of the team were in some cas­es bet­ter or equal in abil­i­ty to the over­seas based play­ers se­lect­ed. I be­lieve that the TTCB mis­un­der­stood the suc­cess of the Caribbean Pre­mier League for­mat of T20 crick­et be­ing sim­i­lar to the four day re­gion­al tour­na­ment .

An­oth­er er­ror again which we have to be shared with both the coach and se­lec­tors, is the choice of the team cap­tain, which is more crit­i­cal than it ap­pears to those in au­thor­i­ty. Giv­en the amount of chop­ping and chang­ing of the cap­tain over the last 12 months with at least four changes to that lead­er­ship po­si­tion, this has cre­at­ed a lack of sta­bil­i­ty and will un­der­mine team spir­it and ca­ma­raderie which are cer­tain­ly lack­ing in the play­ers' body lan­guage out in the field.

It is em­bar­rass­ing to watch how the rest of the re­gion con­tin­ues to strive in the four-day tour­na­ment, while our team ap­pears to lack men­tal strength and ap­ti­tude for long crick­et bat­tles. At the mo­ment, our team seems to lack the con­cen­tra­tion and the will­ing­ness to com­pete. The com­pet­i­tive­ness of a team can be in­spired by a strong leader on and off the play­ing field.

Sad­ly, in all ar­eas, this cur­rent team looks in­ad­e­quate at both the bat­ting and bowl­ing which reg­u­lar­ly fell short on the first day of play. The play­ers look as if they are not play­ing with any pride for coun­try or even them­selves. Changes are def­i­nite­ly need­ed, but un­for­tu­nate­ly T&T has al­ready se­lect­ed a core squad from among those who are re­ceiv­ing month­ly salaries which makes it very dif­fi­cult to re­place them now.

In my opin­ion, if the TTCB is se­ri­ous about our crick­et then the se­lec­tors should al­so be dis­missed and not just tar­get the coach who to me is be­ing used as a scape­goat for the team's poor show­ing so far this sea­son. If the Coach was sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for se­lec­tion all the play­ers then his head is the ul­ti­mate prize, but the se­lec­tors head­ed by Raf­fique Ja­madeen are just as re­spon­si­ble and must be held ac­count­able too.