Sports min­is­ter Anil Roberts yes­ter­day ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment at the re­sponse of the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) to his call for the Board to re­con­sid­er its de­ci­sion to omit spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine from the Test team from the se­ries against New Zealand.

Nar­ine was omit­ted af­ter opt­ing to miss a manda­to­ry train­ing camp and in­stead rep­re­sent Kolkata Knight Rid­ers in the IPL fi­nal on Sun­day.

Roberts wrote Board pres­i­dent Dave Cameron ask­ing for the WICB to re­con­sid­er the de­ci­sion.

How­ev­er, Cameron re­spond­ed on Mon­day, stat­ing the Board stood by its process­es where play­ers are se­lect­ed to rep­re­sent the re­gion in var­i­ous for­mats of the game. "A few months ago the Board of Di­rec­tors, West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion and the Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Boards agreed a way for­ward re­gard­ing our man­age­ment of the sport with the aim of get­ting us back to num­ber one."

He added: "We ar­rived at a con­sen­sus which is trans­par­ent and places the play­ers as pri­or­i­ty as we seek to grow the game. We are cog­nizant of the emo­tions which run con­trary to the process. We ask that oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tions re­spect our po­si­tion and when the time is ap­pro­pri­ate as we al­ways do, is seek a fo­rum for your val­ued in­put. We look for­ward to your con­tin­ued sup­port as we seek to fur­ther de­vel­op West In­dies Crick­et."

But Roberts yes­ter­day said he was ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ed at the Board's whole­sale re­jec­tion of his ar­gu­ments. "If the 'coun­try first pol­i­cy' is to be tru­ly ef­fec­tive, it must take all vari­ables in­to ac­count, chiefly the ath­lete's de­sire and com­mit­ment to coun­try, which by all ac­counts, Sunil Nar­ine has ful­filled. It is pass­ing strange that de­spite the play­er's ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est and the club's con­ces­sion to fly him back to the West In­dies im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the IPL fi­nal, the WICB in­stead forced the play­er to choose be­tween aban­don­ing his club at their great­est time of need and at­tend­ing the first few days of a train­ing camp deemed com­pul­so­ry by mere ad­min­is­tra­tors."

Roberts said such a de­ci­sion in his view was in­con­sid­er­ate, brutish and un­com­pro­mis­ing in a sit­u­a­tion that war­rant­ed more ro­bust ne­go­ti­a­tion.

"Fur­ther, as many fans across the re­gion have not­ed, while Nar­ine is re­ject­ed from the Tests, he is still an op­tion for se­lec­tion to the T20 se­ries, which means in spite of not be­ing able to reach the train­ing camp by the stip­u­lat­ed date and time, he is part­ly pun­ished by ex­clu­sion from the Test side but in­clud­ed when the more lu­cra­tive T20 games be­gin."

He said there was a flaw in such log­ic. "This cer­tain­ly speaks to the "mens rea" of your pol­i­cy mak­ers and more im­por­tant­ly, the mar­ketabil­i­ty and broad­cast ap­peal of this in­ter­na­tion­al­ly revered spin bowler. It is a pity that the hard­er-to-sell Test match­es will not ben­e­fit from Nar­ine's demon­strat­ed draw­ing pow­er as ac­knowl­edged by your Board's abil­i­ty to bend the pol­i­cy to suit your pock­et.

"In the end, it is the West In­dies team that suf­fers for the lack of a ful­ly-stocked ar­se­nal, it is the ath­lete that suf­fers for lack of Test play­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and it is the fans that will suf­fer for lack of en­ter­tain­ment from the best spin bowler in the world. It is in­deed re­gret­table that the WICB is sat­is­fied to field a weak­ened team for such an im­por­tant re-build­ing home se­ries".

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