Chair­man of the West In­dies se­lec­tion pan­el, Roger Harp­er, be­lieves that to be suc­cess­ful go­ing for­ward and to com­pete with the best teams in the world, the West In­dies need to have top-lev­el play­ers in all for­mats of the game at present. Harp­er was speak­ing on Is­ports on i95.5fm with host An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste on Sat­ur­day.

He said, “We need to have World Class play­ers in our West In­dies teams, play­ers who will com­pete in terms of per­for­mance and in terms of the world teams and that is how our crick­et and our teams will get to the top of the pile. If we have sev­er­al World Class play­ers in the team giv­ing us World Class per­for­mances con­sis­tent­ly.

"If you are just mak­ing 30 and the press is clam­our­ing that he de­serves a try, I would like my job to be easy so if you mak­ing 30 and the oth­er guy is mak­ing 31, then I have to try and de­cide who is bet­ter but if you are av­er­ag­ing 60 or 70, then all I have to do is write your name down, you are pick­ing your­self and that is what we have to en­cour­age our play­ers to do, think big­ger, aim high­er and think of putting in World Class per­for­mances to match with World Class play­ers.”

Harp­er, a for­mer West In­dies play­er un­der the great cap­tain Clive Lloyd, al­so be­lieves the re­gion­al ter­ri­to­ries need to take more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

"I think the de­vel­op­ment of the young play­ers is a com­bi­na­tion of both (Re­gion­al Boards and Crick­et West In­dies). I be­lieve that the West In­dies fans are from the ter­ri­to­ries, the West In­dies team comes from the ter­ri­to­ries, they don’t fall out of the sky so we are al­ways point­ing to the West In­dies board but I think the ter­ri­to­ries have a se­ri­ous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as well, they are the ones who need to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in my opin­ion to de­vel­op the World Class play­ers, this is what was done in the past and I think that a lot of buck-pass­ing has been done.

"Okay, so we are very proud to say when Bri­an Lara was break­ing all those records. He's from Trinidad and To­ba­go but if a play­er isn’t do­ing well, you are say­ing,'Oh my what is the West In­dies Crick­et Board do­ing?” said Harp­er.

“So I think there is some in­con­sis­ten­cy and you need to get back to what was done in the past and take the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to de­vel­op qual­i­ty and World Class, play­ers. We have sev­er­al World Class play­ers, we have a num­ber of them in the short­est for­mat of the game and short­est for­mat in par­tic­u­lar but we al­so have World Class play­ers in the Test for­mat. You just look at the Test cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er, who has been ranked the num­ber one all-rounder in Test crick­et for a while and then Ke­mar Roach up there for a while, and Shan­non Gabriel whose has been do­ing pret­ty well but we need to have a team of World Class play­ers not a scat­ter­ing of World Class play­ers."

With the World T20 Fi­nals planned for in Oc­to­ber, Harp­er was quick to ex­plain no one knows what is go­ing on but the play­ers and ad­min­is­tra­tors have work that can be done dur­ing this pe­ri­od to en­sure every­one is ready when­ev­er crick­et re­sumes.

“Gen­er­al­ly, we have seen some im­prove­ments and it is just a mat­ter of turn­ing those im­prove­ments in terms of per­for­mances in­to con­sis­tent, pos­i­tive re­sults. As to the World Cup team, it de­pends on when things come back to some form of nor­mal­cy. If you just have to pick a team to go di­rect­ly in­to that World Cup, it is go­ing to be a lit­tle bit of a chal­lenge be­cause we were in the process of nar­row­ing what we thought our best squad would be. We had a few more se­ries to do but we don’t know when we will have a chance to do that.

“But I think, we just have to make the best of what­ev­er the sit­u­a­tion is, pick what we think our best team is and give it our best shot. I still think that we can put a team out there that will be very, very com­pet­i­tive,” said Harp­er, who has been in this role since Oc­to­ber.

Look­ing back at the pre­vi­ous tour­na­ment the West In­dies won in 2016, he said, "That team that we man­aged to put out for that World Cup was filled with a lot of ex­pe­ri­enced T20 spe­cial­ist and now we have a lit­tle blend of a few of the ex­pe­ri­enced T20 play­ers in there and some of the young guns com­ing through so don’t get me wrong, I still think that we have a good shot of win­ning the tour­na­ment but I don’t think we will be go­ing in­to the tour­na­ment as the over­whelm­ing favourite, so it is a mat­ter of get­ting what we think our best squad would be to­geth­er. Pick­ing our best 11 for each game and look­ing for­ward to them per­form­ing at their best and mak­ing smart de­ci­sions and win­ning the crit­i­cal mo­ments of the game.

“We have a lot of young play­ers in the squad (ex­pe­ri­ence as well), rel­a­tive­ly young com­pared to the cham­pi­ons of 2016, but we al­so have a few of those cham­pi­ons in the team and very ex­pe­ri­ence T20 play­ers, and they un­der­stand that part of their role is to nur­ture the young­sters and bring them on and guide them. I think the coach and the cap­tain and the se­nior guys, they un­der­stand that and they are try­ing to do just that.”

Harp­er, who in his hey­day, was con­sid­ered one of the fittest play­ers in the World and a top-class field­er to add to his all-round strength with bat and ball, had a strong mes­sage for all play­ers dur­ing this World lock­down on all sports about stay­ing fit and their over­all fit­ness and re­main­ing in con­tact with their re­spec­tive strength and con­di­tion­ing coach­es in the re­gion.

He said, "If you want some­thing bad enough and you are de­ter­mined to achieve it, you will find a way to achieve it, if you want to find an ex­cuse you will find one, if you want to find a way to achieve it, you will find one as well.”