Alvin?Corneal

Some­times we make mis­takes! That is hu­man. Oth­er times our de­ci­sions are based up­on mo­ments of anger, jeal­ousy, and even vin­dic­tive­ness, es­pe­cial­ly in sport.Since the an­nounce­ment of Ja­son Hold­er's choice as cap­tain of the West In­dies ODI squad, it seems as though there have been many more rea­sons for the se­lec­tors to in­clude or omit play­ers, many of which may not have log­i­cal ex­pla­na­tions.

It is clear to see that the se­lect­ed team does not re­flect what could ap­pear to be sen­si­ble analy­ses of the play­ers who are el­i­gi­ble con­tenders.Just a few months ago, these same se­lec­tors had cho­sen Dwayne Bra­vo to lead the ODI squad against Ire­land, New zealand, Bangladesh and In­dia, a clear and fair de­ci­sion, if there was ever one.Who would have chal­lenged the ath­let­ic all-rounder's ex­tra­or­di­nary abil­i­ty to bat, bowl, and field as good as any­one with sim­i­lar ca­pa­bil­i­ties?

This was no ac­ci­dent, just look at the records at his en­tire ca­reer, re­gard­less of where he played, and we can see that this type of crick­eter will al­ways have a place in to­day's ODI set­ting es­pe­cial­ly.

These same se­lec­tors were the ones who chose Bra­vo for In­dia, which brings my next ques­tion to the three-man pan­el.Clear­ly you ap­pear to ad­mit that your first de­ci­sion was faulty. OK, if so, how on earth could your choice for cap­tain be jus­ti­fied at this time?

And while I recog­nise the po­ten­tial of Hold­er as a promis­ing fast bowler, the role of cap­tain­cy could not be jus­ti­fied.The job of cap­tain­cy can­not be learnt from a book, nei­ther can any­one search a crys­tal ball and come up with the name of a young man whose rep­u­ta­tion lies be­tween one test match and 21 ODIs, some with oc­ca­sion­al suc­cess, but noth­ing to high­light his prowess as a cap­tain for the fu­ture.

As a bowler among the oth­ers that are avail­able, ex­act­ly where do the se­lec­tors place Hold­er among Jerome Tay­lor, Ke­mar Roach, Ravi Ram­paul, An­dre Rus­sell, Kr­ish­mar San­tok­ie, Shan­non Gabriel, and Shel­don Cot­trell? This pan­el has cho­sen all these play­ers with­in the past year.The blind will chose Tay­lor, Roach, Ram­paul, Rus­sell, and San­tok­ie ahead of the young fast bowler. I ad­mit that the three se­lec­tors are for­mer test play­ers, hence the rea­son we all be­lieved that they should have done a bet­ter job of se­lec­tion.

Let's look at the psy­cho­log­i­cal as­pect of this green horn lead­ing a bunch of more ex­pe­ri­enced (proven mind you), con­trib­u­tors to the in­ter­na­tion­al game, many of them ac­cred­it­ed with ex­cel­lent marks in their un­fin­ished ca­reers.Hav­ing said my piece, if the se­lec­tion of this team was gen­uine­ly cho­sen by the pan­el, then it would ap­pear that they are poor as­ses­sors of play­ers.I sup­pose that we can go on to speak about the omis­sion of Kieron Pol­lard, Ram­paul and Dar­ren Sam­my, all of whom were cho­sen by this same trio re­cent­ly.

The pan­el has lost their way, or they do not know as much of the great game as they were giv­en cred­it for. Un­less they were giv­en in­struc­tions by the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) that these play­ers must not be con­sid­ered for se­lec­tion be­cause of ac­tiv­i­ty that is un­re­lat­ed to the game it­self.That pro­vides a dif­fer­ent pic­ture and one which has far reach­ing pro­por­tions, es­pe­cial­ly if there hap­pens to be some sort of vin­dic­tive be­hav­iour by the Board or the Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee.

If the WICB gave that de­ci­sion and the se­lec­tion pan­el fol­lowed the in­struc­tion, then we must as­sume that nei­ther took blame in the man­ner that the task force was iden­ti­fied. Their re­port said that all par­ties were wrong. That in­clud­ed, WICB, West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (Wipa) and the play­ers.The on­ly full time em­ploy­ees in that trio, are the play­ers, and un­less the Board can in­di­cate the rea­sons for pe­nal­is­ing the play­ers, it must be brought to the pub­lic.

These play­ers may have erred by not tak­ing the field against In­dia, but they were lit­er­al­ly pushed in­to this sit­u­a­tion by a bunch of am­a­teurs on the WICB and Wipa, both of which could not pro­vide an of­fi­cial con­tract for the play­ers to ac­cept, be­fore the start of the In­dia tour.From its present po­si­tion, I be­lieve that the time has come for every­one of the na­tion­al crick­et boards to ac­cept that enough is enough. There is an ab­sence of pro­fes­sion­al­ism, com­pe­tence, and busi­ness acu­men, all of which are need­ed to con­duct the game of crick­et, which is now big busi­ness.

Right now, they have the play­ers mak­ing state­ments which have a flavour of ac­cept­ing de­ci­sions be­cause they want to con­tin­ue so long as their salaries are paid.The pic­ture is abysmal, the mind­set of the play­ers are not com­pat­i­ble with their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as West In­dies crick­eters.The re­sult in the first Test against South Africa is an ob­vi­ous sign, and who knows what is brew­ing down the road