It would appear that the West Indies Cricket Board and its selectors are determined to keep Adrian Barath out of the West Indies team until they have finally run out of options. Barath, who suffered an injury before the World Cup even began and has been in training and playing for weeks, is now being sent to the Sagicor Training Centre presumably to keep working. This is, of course, utter nonsense as the same thing was done to him last year, only for the selectors to pick D Richards, who then proved to be a failure. To have one of the most talented young batsmen sitting on the sidelines while the team is struggling is quite absurd and very unfair to the young man.
When combined with the furore over Chris Gayle, the non-selection of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, and the absence of Jerome Taylor, this further depletes a team that has as its captain a very average cricketer. As usual the media are silent over the treatment meted out to Barath. Meanwhile every Tom, Dick and Harry has been tried as opening batsman and, with the exception of Lendl Simmons, have all been failures. Nor can we expect the TV commentary crew led by the supposed Caribbean legend Tony Cozier to raise this issue as they seem to take a wide detour on issues like this one. With M Holding out of the commentary team and in England we are left with a rather wishy-washy crew.
Tony Boodhoo
Ontario, Canada