All­rounder Kieron Pol­lard was dropped from the West In­dies team for the Tri-Na­tion se­ries in­volv­ing Sri Lan­ka and Zim­bab­we next month be­cause he lacked 'bat­ting com­mit­ment,' dur­ing his stint with the team in the Pak­istan.

In a wide rang­ing in­ter­view on ra­dio on Mon­day night, Pol­lard said he was told by chair­man of se­lec­tors, Court­ney Browne, that he was dropped be­cause of 'bat­ting com­mit­ment.'

"So, not be­cause of my on­field catch­ing, my en­er­gy on the field, my bowl­ing re­turns or my ad­vice to the cap­tain but be­cause of my (lack of) com­mit­ment to bat­ting."

Ad­mit­ting that he had a bad tour in terms of per­for­mances, Pol­lard said there were a num­ber of crick­et­ing rea­sons for his scores which he ex­plained to the chair­man of se­lec­tors.

He iden­ti­fied the state of the in­nings and what had tran­spired be­fore he went out to bat. "I paint­ed all the sce­nar­ios, com­ing in to bat in the T20s at 25-5, then 70-5 and then again sev­en­ty some­thing for 5. If I played my nat­ur­al game and got catch out on the bound­ary, peo­ple will say I am ir­re­spon­si­ble."

He said it was in­ter­est­ing that he should be dropped af­ter one bad tour­na­ment when in the se­ries be­fore in the Caribbean, he topped the av­er­ages when the West In­dies reached the fi­nals of the Tri-na­tions se­ries in­volv­ing South Africa and Aus­tralia.

"So I can­not agree with the chair­man of the se­lec­tors that there was a lack of bat­ting com­mit­ment."

Pol­lard said he is still in­ter­est­ed in play­ing for the West In­dies and was told his ca­reer is not over, he just needs to go back and work on his game.

Pol­lard said he was sur­prised that fel­low Trinida­di­an De­nesh Ramdin was al­so dropped. "Per­haps this was the one that shocked most peo­ple, when Ramdin, who scored two to­tals of thir­ty odd was al­so dropped and was told that it was his com­mit­ment to wick­et­keep­ing that was the prob­lem, he was not cheer­ing on the team enough, (not) giv­ing them en­cour­age­ment."

Pol­lard not­ed that with every­thing go­ing on, there is a strong be­lief that Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens are be­ing picked on. "We have heard what has been said by well re­spect­ed per­sons about some at the West In­dies Crick­et Board and their feel­ings on Trinidad and To­ba­go."

He said it was dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand the de­ci­sion to re­move an­oth­er Trinida­di­an, coach Phil Sim­mons, on the eve of the team's de­par­ture for Pak­istan. "There is no doubt the sack­ing of the coach af­fect­ed the team. Phil Sim­mons was more in­volved in man man­age­ment. He was some­one the play­ers could go to for any mat­ters per­son­al or oth­er­wise. There was a trust and he could and was will­ing to give you a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive and it helped many play­ers with both the men­tal and tech­ni­cal as­pect of their games. Play­ers are hu­man and there­fore who can the play­ers turn to for the tour. Hon­est­ly no­body seemed to know who was in charge. One day we asked for the train­ing sched­ule and the an­swer came from the physio. The next day, we asked for oth­er in­for­ma­tion and it came from the me­dia man­ag­er. It was a lot of bits and pieces and some­times you ask ques­tions to man­age­ment and you did not get an an­swer. We can­not fault the two coach­es Springer and Es­t­wick. They are prob­a­bly on tour by tour con­tracts and re­al­ly would not be in a strong po­si­tion to say any­thing," added Pol­lard.

Pol­lard sug­gest­ed that in­su­lar­i­ty was re­turn­ing to West In­dies crick­et and was com­ing from the top.

"When I first came in­to West In­dies crick­et around 2006/7, there was this idea of per­sons from dif­fer­ent coun­tries but that changed over the years with T20 crick­et, IPL, CPL and oth­er tour­na­ments around the world. Every­one be­gan to bet­ter ap­pre­ci­ate every­one else, so you would meet up Sam­my, meet up Gayle, meet up oth­ers and you build a bond on the out­side, so now when you come back to play for West In­dies it is a great to­geth­er­ness. There is no more of that but it is start­ing to come back and we all are see­ing where it is com­ing from. It is hap­pen­ing from the top of West In­dies crick­et."

Pol­lard al­so spoke of the bro­ken spir­it of the play­ers in Pak­istan and iden­ti­fied it as the rea­son why the team was swept in both the T20s and ODIs. "As to team meet­ings, it was ap­palling, play­ers were just there and sit­ting down and noth­ing was be­ing said be­cause guys were afraid to voice their opin­ion based on what was go­ing on, that you could lose your place. This is not good for the team go­ing for­ward. In­stead of think­ing about win­ning, play­ers were think­ing about stats, be­ing 30 or 40 not out and not try­ing to win match­es but this can be ex­pect­ed, when the se­lec­tors make these com­ments about your av­er­age."