Se­lect­ing any crick­et team any­where is very dif­fi­cult. When it comes to West In­di­an teams, the process be­comes so fraught with in­sin­u­a­tions, in­nu­en­does, even in­sid­er pol­i­tics, that an al­ready thank­less job be­comes al­most im­pos­si­ble. What­ev­er se­lec­tors do, they will nev­er please every­one every­where.

Like pre­dict­ing stock mar­kets, se­lec­tors should fol­low their in­tu­ition and re­liance on sit­u­a­tions which are not al­ways ob­vi­ous or even ex­is­tent. They have to take bold chances and choic­es, most­ly be­liev­ing heads more than hearts, us­ing fore­sight, very hard tasks in­deed.But the changes pub­lished by West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) that for­mer WI cap­tain Clive Lloyd will head a re­vamped WICB se­lec­tion pan­el, as I had pre­dict­ed, is cause for re­served hope.

That pan­el will al­so in­clude two for­mer WI open­ing bowlers Court­ney Walsh and El­dine Bap­tiste, vast­ly ex­pe­ri­enced cam­paign­ers, along with re­tained for­mer wick­et-keep­er Court­ney Brown, which gives a tan­ta­lis­ing taste that the process will be han­dled much dif­fer­ent­ly than has tran­spired over re­cent years.It al­so shows that fast bowlers are not as dumb as many think. Those spin­ner se­lec­tors were ter­ri­ble.

Head coach Ot­tis Gib­son, al­so a for­mer fast bowler, has a vote on this pan­el, while team cap­tains will con­tribute opin­ions but no ac­tu­al vote. That lat­ter part of that equa­tion is se­ri­ous­ly flawed, back­wards even. Cap­tains must have a vote too.Crick­et is not like foot­ball, where a coach alone se­lects teams, send­ing them out with nom­i­nal cap­tains, out­field play­ers do­ing their on­ly job, kick­ing balls around, noth­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent by any of them.Like on­ly goal-keep­ers, crick­et is a game of in­di­vid­ual spe­cial­ists. Each bowler is unique, bats­men's func­tion­al­i­ty all-to­geth­er dif­fer­ent, while all-rounders can do both. Wick­et-keep­ers, like goal-keep­ers, are a breed apart.

Nec­es­sary bowl­ing changes can on­ly come from cap­tains on the field, not coach­es on side­lines. Since ac­tive sub­sti­tu­tions are not yet al­lowed in crick­et, crick­et coach­es' jobs are su­per­flu­ous; that is ex­pend­able.Mean­while, crick­et cap­tains al­ways lead from the front.On­ly crick­et cap­tains on the field could use those un­ex­plain­able in­ner feel­ings, based on present as­sess­ments, to ma­nip­u­late and make ap­pro­pri­ate bowl­ing changes to se­cure wick­ets, hope­ful­ly, ul­ti­mate­ly, gain­ing suc­cess.

There­fore, cap­tains must have much more than just an in­put. They must have ac­tive votes on play­ers they want as com­pa­ny on the field, with the un­der­stand­ing that con­fi­dence in, and chem­istry with es­pe­cial­ly bowlers, make tremen­dous al­lies in get­ting the best per­for­mances out of those who trun­dle.Iron­i­cal­ly, it was Lloyd him­self, ap­point­ed WI cap­tain for 1974/5's tour to In­dia, who brought that neo-mod­ern be­lief that cap­tains must have fi­nal words as to whom should be se­lect­ed. Al­so, there is no doubt­ing Lloyd's ex­cel­lent eye for un­her­ald­ed tal­ent.

His first out-of-the-box se­lec­tions, on his first tour as cap­tain, were young, ag­gres­sive, un­tried bats­men Sir Vi­vian Richards and Gor­don Greenidge, now bat­ting leg­ends in our crick­et­ing fir­ma­ment. Greenidge made 93 and 107 on de­but, Richards made 192 not out in his sec­ond Test, his­to­ry even­tu­al­ly con­firm­ing Lloyd's bril­liant vi­sion on that duo.Lloyd, sin­gu­lar­ly fo­cused as cap­tain-cum-se­lec­tor, al­so saw a young, speedy, rel­a­tive­ly raw Sir Andy Roberts emerge. Roberts had played on­ly one Test be­fore some­how bowl­ing so quick­ly and so well that he got 32 wick­ets in five Tests, in In­dia 1974/75; a stu­pen­dous sta­tis­tic!

With ma­tur­ing cap­tain­cy, Lloyd un­der­stood that he need­ed play­ers he could de­pend on to al­ways give 100 per­cent, that ar­mor and am­mu­ni­tion nec­es­sary to win. Luck­i­ly, he got those too. He un­earthed the di­a­bol­i­cal pace of 21 year old Michael Hold­ing, on­ly three First Class match­es for WI's tour to Aus­tralia 1975/6. West In­dies lost that se­ries bad­ly but not be­fore cool "Mr T" had shown his bud­ding great­ness, im­me­di­ate­ly com­bin­ing with "Fruit T" Roberts to form half of a great pace quar­tet.

The skip­per was re­spon­si­ble for the oth­er half of that still talked about quar­tet too, with in­clu­sions and emer­gence of Joel "Big Bird" Gar­ner, af­ter three First Class match­es and my­self nick­named "Bomber", af­ter four First Class match­es, com­plet­ing "The Four Horse­men of the Apoc­a­lypse", the best pace at­tack ever. Ob­vi­ous­ly, with those su­perla­tive se­lec­tions, Lloyd knows tal­ent when he sees it. One hopes that he is al­lowed to par­lay with present play­ers, on­ly as head se­lec­tor, as was done when he was al­so cap­tain.

How­ev­er, his biggest prob­lem in this mod­ern era is not if there are enough crick­eters play­ing the game here, for there are thou­sands more now ply­ing their game in the Caribbean than 35-40 years ago.The prob­lem is that, most­ly, our re­gion­al crick­eters have been or­di­nary, with few lu­mi­nes­cent slags suf­fi­cient­ly strik­ing enough, right now, to war­rant sug­ges­tions that they will be­come supreme.

Know­ing our ma­nip­u­la­tive Caribbean, that gnaw­ing gut al­so feel­ing re­mains that this ap­point­ment is slight­ly more po­lit­i­cal­ly adroit than meets the eye; pi­geon-holed, sil­hou­et­ted shad­ows for the fu­ture.It is ob­vi­ous that, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly had am­bi­tions to be pres­i­dent of WICB, Lloyd ex­pects, per­haps even de­serves more clout in WI crick­et than this ap­point­ment of be­ing just chair­man of se­lec­tors al­lows.So, we shall see how things go these next two years of the ap­point­ments. It will not be easy! En­joy!