When in­su­lar­i­ty orig­i­nates with­in ter­ri­to­r­i­al crick­et boards in the re­gion, it is time to be­come wary. Be­fore long, it will move in­to the West In­di­an dress­ing room, thence to the play­ing field with dropped catch­es and er­rant run outs, in­ten­tion­al­ly be­com­ing the or­der of the day. There­fore this must not be en­cour­aged in any form or fash­ion, de­spite our in­di­vid­ual bias. That is why the re­cent an­nounce­ment of the three West In­di­an se­lec­tors who will serve for the next two years is at best, per­plex­ing and at worse down­right de­ceit­ful. It is not so much their lack of test play­ing knowl­edge, be­cause that by it­self is nev­er a guar­an­tee for suc­cess, but rather that two of the three men were on the se­lec­tion com­mit­tee dur­ing the pre­vi­ous two years when the West In­dies failed and fal­tered with er­rant, mis­guid­ed se­lec­tion be­ing the or­der of the day.

The se­lec­tors con­tin­u­ing their high-salaried jobs are Guyanese Clyde Butts, for­mer West In­dies off spin­ner and Ja­maican Robert Haynes, a leg-spin­ner, with lim­it­ed suc­cess. The oth­er mem­ber of this tri­umvi­rate, who was not re­tained was T&T's Raph­ick Ju­madeen, an­oth­er for­mer West In­dies spin bowler. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board did not re-sub­mit his name, but in­stead nom­i­nat­ed Gus Lo­gie and Tony Gray. How­ev­er both Guyana and Ja­maica nom­i­nat­ed Butts and Haynes to re­tain their posts. And here­in lies the ques­tion. Did both these boards (Guyana and Ja­maica), make their de­ci­sion based on coun­try or the re­gion? And if it is re­gion, on what ba­sis? Cer­tain­ly it can­not be on their suc­cess or any spe­cif­ic ini­tia­tive that bore fruit. So it is most like­ly that both of these bod­ies may have as­sessed the sit­u­a­tion based on per­son­al gains. This, peo­ple, would be IN­SU­LAR­I­TY of the worse kind and, if so, con­doned by the West In­dies Crick­et Board's mim­ic men. One of the rea­sons why this was al­lowed to hap­pen was be­cause oth­er ter­ri­to­ries failed to nom­i­nate strong can­di­dates.

Here are the names of the eight per­sons who were nom­i­nat­ed: Clyde Butts, Robert Haynes, Court­ney Browne (Bar­ba­dos, for­mer WI wick­et­keep­er), Hugh Gore (An­tigua, for­mer Com­bined Is­lands swing bowler), Andy Roberts (An­tigua, for­mer WI fast bowler), Ne­hemi­ah Per­ry (Ja­maica for­mer WI spin­ner), Lo­gie (for­mer WI bats­man) and Gray (for­mer WI fast bowler). From this list, Butts, Haynes and Browne were em­ployed. In my opin­ion, at least two of those nom­i­nat­ed stood lit­tle chance of be­ing se­lect­ed. Roberts was not on­ly a for­mer play­er, but a for­mer coach who was al­so a se­lec­tor four years ago. His term end­ed with him speak­ing out on many is­sues in the WICB. It was un­like­ly the Board was go­ing to give this hon­est, frank-talk­ing man an­oth­er chance to prove them wrong again. The oth­er name was Lo­gie, who was un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly dumped as coach af­ter the team won the ICC Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy in 2004. It has al­ways been a strained re­la­tion­ship since then, and even though he is a God-fear­ing man, Lo­gie must still ask ques­tions oc­ca­sion­al­ly as to what he did wrong?

The an­swer is noth­ing, ex­cept that the WICB had al­ready hired a per­son for the job, be­fore the team won in 2004. So the mem­bers of the T&TCB need­ed to have their heads ex­am­ined for do­ing this. The per­son who I be­lieve should have been nom­i­nat­ed from T&T is Derek Mur­ray. Whether Mur­ray would have ac­cept­ed it, giv­en his pre­vi­ous de­sire to be West In­dies Crick­et Board Pres­i­dent (which may still hap­pen), is now on­ly a mat­ter for con­jec­ture. But we have a crick­et board in T&T that, I be­lieve, is in de­nial. To me, it is a group of peo­ple who are still in elec­tion cam­paign mode and does not un­der­stand the big­ger pic­ture as it re­lates to West In­dies crick­et. It seems if you sup­port­ed the board you have a chance. If you op­pose them, it's "cra­paud smoke yuh pipe." It seems as if they see things through warped lens. Az­im Bas­sarath and com­pa­ny may not be mag­nan­i­mous enough to see Mur­ray as the best op­tion for any­thing. He is treat­ed as if he is their en­e­my!

This leads to the is­sue of in­su­lar­i­ty. My un­der­stand­ing is that each ter­ri­to­r­i­al board can nom­i­nate two per­sons. Can you see any of them nom­i­nat­ing some­one who is not from their coun­try? Can you imag­ine the Bas­sarath and com­pa­ny sup­port­ing Desmond Haynes or Gor­don Greenidge? Or Ja­maica say­ing yes to Mur­ray, Lo­gie or Gray?. The de­ci­sion to se­lect the trio was giv­en to a five-man re­view com­mit­tee, com­pris­ing the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the WICB, Dr Ernest Hillar­ie chair­man of the WICB Crick­et Com­mit­tee Joel Gar­ner, for­mer West In­dies cap­tain Clive Lloyd and WICB chief crick­et op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer Tony Howard and for­mer West In­dies fast bowler Court­ney Walsh. It was lat­er re­vealed that Walsh was ab­sent. Of the four men left, one was from St Lu­cia, one from Guyana and the oth­er two from Bar­ba­dos. This may lead to the con­clu­sion that Browne was se­lect­ed based on na­tion­al­i­ty rather than cre­den­tials.

Af­ter all, Browne who has been known in some parts of the Caribbean as "Blight­ed" Browne for his many wick­et-keep­ing mis­takes that cost West In­dies se­vere­ly, does not have a glow­ing track record. He played 20 tests scor­ing 387 runs at an av­er­age of 16.12; he al­so played 46 ODIs, scor­ing 415 runs at an av­er­age of 17.29. These sta­tis­tics def­i­nite­ly put him in the right com­pa­ny since his two col­leagues, Butts and Haynes, were mediocre by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion. There is no sane per­son in the re­gion, who can hon­est­ly say that the pre­vi­ous se­lec­tion pan­el did a good job. So why drop Ju­madeen and keep the oth­er two? By re­tain­ing them, what­ev­er lit­tle cred­i­bil­i­ty the WICB had con­tin­ues to be erod­ed. The board is in good com­pa­ny, since the same can be said about all the the ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards in the re­gion. In the mean­time, pre­pare, my friends in the Caribbean, for more an­guish.