An­dre Bap­tiste

There is trou­ble brew­ing in the West In­dies camp in New Zealand, fol­low­ing the dis­ap­point­ing per­for­mances in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed test se­ries against New Zealand, which was lost 0-2.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that sev­er­al team meet­ings were held af­ter the sec­ond Test de­ba­cle, where the West In­dies bat­ting suc­cumbed eas­i­ly and the West In­dies lost in­side of three days.At these meet­ings with coach Ot­tis Gib­son and sev­er­al oth­er of­fi­cials on the tour, a num­ber of play­ers were asked to open­ly give their feel­ings and thoughts."Some of the play­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly the bats­men were ques­tion­ing the fact that the West In­dies bowlers line and length were dif­fer­ent to the New Zealand swing bowlers and this need­ed to be ad­just­ed ahead of the third Test. It was felt that noth­ing was done by the coach to make the trans­for­ma­tion by the bowlers. Af­ter the bats­men saw how bad­ly the bowlers per­formed when New Zealand bat­ted, it was a com­plete let down and it re­sult­ed in the gut­less bat­ting per­for­mance in the sec­ond in­nings."

The source not­ed that a num­ber of the bowlers were not hap­py with the com­ments and es­pe­cial­ly the cap­tain Dar­ren Sam­my, who was in a fight­ing mood and mat­ters es­ca­lat­ed in the nets with a play­er be­ing hit by a de­liv­ery thrown by Sam­my. "There was close to a re­al con­fronta­tion and it was on­ly when bet­ter sense pre­vailed that mat­ters were kept down, but the mood in the camp de­te­ri­o­rat­ed," he added."Sev­er­al of the play­ers were dis­ap­point­ed that Gib­son and the oth­er two se­lec­tors on the tour, Clyde Butts and Robert Haynes, did not in­ter­vene and re­solve the mat­ter but in­stead tried to play as if it nev­er oc­curred. It was re­al­ly bad. Sam­my said he is the West In­dies cap­tain and there was noth­ing any­body could do him," added the source. Sev­er­al per­sons close to the play­er have al­ready con­tact­ed the West In­dies Crick­et Board which has re­quest­ed a writ­ten re­port from all of the par­ties, in­clud­ing the two West In­dies se­lec­tors. Haynes is the one due to send the re­port to the WICB.

Sources say the play­ers are try­ing to min­imise the dam­age done by the in­ci­dent, even though a play­er was in­jured by what looked like a beam­er and had to re­ceive med­ical at­ten­tion.For­mer West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion ( Wipa) pres­i­dent, Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine, has al­so been con­tact­ed by fam­i­ly of the play­er who was in­jured, and he has promised to con­tact Wipa pres­i­dent Wavell Hinds and have the mat­ter raised at the high­est lev­el ."It is ex­pect­ed that there may be a fur­ther fall­out with­in the team when Dwayne Bra­vo takes over as he is not known to stand for this sort of be­hav­iour. It is a pity that it has reached this stage, and now that Mar­lon Samuels has left af­ter what hap­pened with Shilling­ford be­ing banned, it is get­ting worse."The West In­dies and New Zealand went in­to ac­tion in the first One-Day­er last night (to­day T&T time.)