Alvin Corneal

With five match­es in the se­ries ver­sus South Africa, our per­cent­age of fail­ure is atro­cious, a po­si­tion which again opens the door for us to go in search of ad­just­ments which may prove more pro­duc­tive. When Otis Gib­son was ap­point­ed as the coach of the team, many, like my­self were of the opin­ion that it was a good choice and what the for­mer Bar­ba­di­an fast bowlers need­ed was a chance to analyse the per­for­mances of the play­ers, make the changes which were ap­par­ent, des­per­ate­ly need­ed, and be­gin his pro­gramme which would have led to more re­spon­si­ble ap­pli­ca­tion, com­mit­ment and even­tu­al re­sults.

This did not ma­te­ri­alise and the sit­u­a­tion has wors­ened im­mense­ly through the world Twen­ty20 se­ries up to the fifth match in this se­ries. Yet still, let me say here and now, I do not be­lieve that it makes good sense to even think of start­ing the blame game on Gib­son, if on­ly be­cause he has not had to op­por­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate his skills at the con­ven­tion­al Test match scene.

The short­er ver­sion of the game, which con­sist of flash­ing bats and bowl­ing dot balls, does not need a coach half as much as it needs a ma­gi­cian of some kind to ac­com­pa­ny la­dy luck all the way. Of course, a bit of in­tel­li­gent think­ing would help im­mense­ly, but we are all aware that this is not an area of strength in our cur­rent play­ers.

Bet­ter qual­i­ty of play should have been ex­pect­ed in the One Day In­ter­na­tion­al's, where there is much breath­ing space for plot­ting a de­cent course of ac­tion.

What we have re­ceived af­ter the var­i­ous de­feats, was some friv­o­lous com­ments about the play­ers hav­ing to get se­ri­ous and get a bet­ter job done. How­ev­er, he prob­a­bly did not re­alise that he was guilty of the same ir­re­spon­si­ble bat­ting of which he is aim­ing at the oth­ers, and cor­rec­tive mea­sures are not eas­i­ly cor­rect­ed in the midst of a se­ries, by a mere com­ment. Clear­ly, the choice of play­ers is un­der scruti­ny, with teams play­ing in dif­fer­ent parts of the world and the frag­men­ta­tion of the lim­it­ed tal­ent in an ef­fort to sat­is­fy each tour­na­ment was a huge ex­er­cise in fu­til­i­ty which failed to leave the pre­mier team with some out of form, sub­stan­dard play­ers, pre­sent­ing a sor­did pic­ture.

It would al­so seem as though the se­lec­tion pan­el is mak­ing judge­ment on the play­ers with­out tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the type of games in which they are in­volved and al­so the present state of their form as op­posed mak­ing re­assess­ments of each and every­one, with spe­cif­ic scruti­ny to their scores and bowl­ing fig­ures.My firm com­ment here is that the se­lec­tors have lost touch with re­al­i­ty and are now as con­fused as the play­ers them­selves. Bats­men are be­ing placed in al­most any­where in the or­der while our bowlers are fail­ing to re­tain a lev­el of dis­ci­pline of reg­i­ment­ed in­struc­tions of good line and length from a coach who is ful­ly aware of the val­ue of these in­gre­di­ents.

With­out try­ing to hurt any­one's feel­ings, there were some huge er­rors of judge­ment, start­ing from the re­call of Wavell Hinds and end­ing with the non-ap­pear­ance of Lendl Sim­mons from any of these teams.While the odd flash of bril­liance may have brought Kieron Pol­lard in­to the T20 World Cup, sure­ly the longer ver­sion of the game be­longed more to play­ers like Sim­mons, Nash, Braith­waith and even Im­ran Khan.My next ques­tion will be whether or not the se­lect­ed teams are all ful­ly en­dorsed by the ap­point­ed coach Gib­son. Clear­ly, his si­lence over the poor re­sults is deaf­en­ing and ask­ing skip­per Chris Gayle to of­fer ex­cus­es, brings noth­ing con­struc­tive to the lis­ten­er, or read­er. I am an ad­vo­cate of the sole se­lec­tor process and in this case Gib­son, be­ing made ful­ly re­spon­si­ble for the team se­lec­tion process.

He has the full time rap­port with the play­ers, he sees their prac­tice ses­sions, he knows the in­struc­tions which he gives to them as in­di­vid­u­als and as a group. He can de­ter­mine which of the lot are not re­spond­ing to his re­quests. He would even have an in­cite as to the off the field be­hav­iour of play­ers, a virtue which can de­cide the on the field per­for­mances of play­ers. Gib­son wants progress and he can on­ly sat­is­fy his am­bi­tions when he is not "um­brel­lared" by three guys, whose choic­es have failed to pro­duce any type of suc­cess.

His re­quest for a bat­ting coach is a step in the right di­rec­tion and should have been en­forced days af­ter his con­tract be­gan.

Are we ex­pect­ed to al­low this de­ba­cle to con­tin­ue in­to the en­tire se­ries against the Spring­boks?