For­mer West In­dies great Lawrence Rowe has long been revered as one of the most styl­ish West In­di­an bats­men of all time.

The Ja­maican-born bats­man, who in full flight is de­scribed as one of the best to watch on a crick­et­ing field, re­flect­ed on his ca­reer and the chang­ing face of re­gion­al crick­et in an ex­tend­ed in­ter­view with An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste on Is­ports on I95.5fm on Thurs­day,

He shared his ap­pre­ci­a­tion on the role of the Twen­ty20 (T20) for­mat in the new era of West In­dies crick­et, say­ing: "A to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent game but if I had a choice, I like the longer game but T20 crick­et has brought out peo­ple who would not come to a crick­et match. You do not see clas­si­cal bat­ting, there is a lot of skill in it so teams are now mak­ing 200-plus and los­ing, guys now learn to hit the ball out of the ground.

"I have seen them train and they work hard but if we are hon­est, we are suf­fer­ing in the longer ver­sion, they do not trans­fer the skills from the short ver­sion.

"For me, if I was in­volved, I would have been a play­er like (Ku­mar) San­gakkara, (Ma­hela) Jayawar­dene, (Sachin) Ten­dulkar, that type of play­er, more or less stay­ing in same form."

Rowe be­lieves that all play­ers should be ver­sa­tile, to be able to tran­si­tion from one for­mat to the oth­er.

“If you can play Test crick­et, you should be able to move on and play in oth­er ver­sions and this is an area of con­cern,” said Rowe, adding that he pleased with the cur­rent white-ball cap­tain of the West In­dies team, Kieron Pol­lard.

"I am very hap­py with him as a play­er and cap­tain. He is do­ing a rea­son­able job and I have spo­ken with him. I re­al­ly thought that he should have been able to play in the longer ver­sion of the game but I be­lieve that when Ja­son Hold­er was made Test cap­tain at a young age, he should have at that time been giv­en the cap­tain­cy in all three ver­sions.

"We have seen it done with oth­er play­ers like Vi­rat Kohli, now he has got old­er but at that time that con­sis­ten­cy would have been good but Ja­son has gone on now."

Rowe keeps the love of crick­et alive

Rowe, who now re­sides in Flori­da, has a Foun­da­tion named af­ter him­self, to­geth­er with his wife for young crick­eters, suit­ably themed "Keep­ing the Love of Crick­et Alive".

"Times have changed a lot for the Caribbean peo­ple up here. Their off-springs have cho­sen oth­er sports so there is a de­crease in the num­ber of Caribbean per­sons play­ing crick­et but we are en­joy­ing our work with the Foun­da­tion and we were due to be back in the Caribbean this year, but with COVID-19, we might have to can­cel.”

He feels that the ad­vent of so much pro­tec­tive gear in crick­et has not aid­ed play­ers in their ap­proach to bat­ting and game, it­self.

"When I start­ed off play­ing crick­et, we on­ly had a box as pro­tec­tion, now things have evolved. I did play with a hel­met but with no grill. In our time, you had to have a rea­son­ably good tech­nique to bat and make runs, but now with all of this pro­tec­tion, that is an area that I be­lieve we need to work on.

"In our time we had no set of coach­es, we use to help each oth­er. Tech­nol­o­gy has made it eas­i­er and quick­er to as­sess an op­po­nent's strength and weak­ness­es but in our time, we use to sit and analyse and do that same thing, it just took longer."

Rowe’s 302 is con­sid­ered as his best in­ning and one of the best triple cen­turies ever record­ed, when he de­mol­ished Eng­land in Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos.

He fond­ly re­calls the in­ning, say­ing: "It was a flaw­less in­ning. I did not give a chance and yes in terms of length of time, it would be my best in­ning, it was stroke play from start to fin­ish, cov­er dri­ve (favourite shot), front foot or back foot.”

The great ad­mir­er of West In­dies leg­end Sir Garfield Sobers, on­ly played 30 Tests from his de­but in 1972 to 1980 and be­lieves he could have done so much more.

"I had a lot of in­juries and missed a lot of crick­et. I was robbed of play­ing when I was in my prime, robbed of mak­ing runs. I be­lieve that if I was not out, I was robbed of an­oth­er 30 Tests match­es and in terms of runs, among the top five West In­di­an bats­men of all times,” said the 71-year-old.

"Sir Gar­ry Sobers, he was my idol when I was grow­ing up and he told a lot of peo­ple, I would be spe­cial. He was just a mag­i­cal play­er. In terms of bowlers, Michael Hold­ing was the fastest con­sis­tent­ly, Andy Roberts could be very fast when he want­ed to as well, but in terms of one bowler to al­ways get wick­ets, it would be Mal­colm Mar­shall, he was a cun­ning bowler and de­cep­tive­ly quick at times."

Lara, Gayle among Rowe's top five bats­men

For Rowe, in terms of mod­ern-day bats­men out­side of his era, Bri­an Charles Lara was the best with Chris Gayle and Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul, be­ing the on­ly oth­ers who he would con­sid­er on longevi­ty and runs so in his top five West In­di­an bats­men, he recog­nised: "Gar­ry Sobers, Bri­an Lara, Vi­vian Richards, Ro­han Kan­hai and Gor­don Greenidge.”

Delv­ing in­to his own ca­reer, he still feels slight­ed by the West In­dies se­lec­tors for be­ing left out of the re­gion­al side's over­seas tour of Aus­tralia in 1981.

"I was by­passed for the Aus­tralian se­ries. I thought I should have still been se­lect­ed," said Rowe, al­so sug­gest­ing that both Ral­ston Ot­to and Richard Gabriel are two oth­er play­ers that could al­so feel ag­griev­ed for nev­er play­ing Test crick­et.

On the South African tour that brought a pre­ma­ture end to Rowe’s ca­reer, he said, "That Tour has done so much for crick­et around the World, as well as the Pack­er se­ries. To be hon­est in 1984 when we re­turned, a poll was done in Ja­maica, and 67 per cent of peo­ple backed us, the peo­ple were not the prob­lem, it was the ad­min­is­tra­tion and gov­ern­ments who were against us and de­stroyed us.

"I be­lieve, my go­ing there (South Africa) would have helped the sit­u­a­tion, in­spire the black peo­ple. I felt we had to do that and not on­ly blacks but whites. I got a let­ter from a guy who was 12 at the time, and he says how much the tour had changed him in terms of how he looks at black peo­ple," said Rowe, who in part­ing left a mes­sage for young play­ers.

"Sky is the lim­it, you can have a good ca­reer, make your­self a re­al man, take it se­ri­ous­ly, work hard and lis­ten to old school play­ers.”