Vin­ode Mam­chan

Sit­ting in the stands twid­dling his fin­gers and think­ing what might have been, had he trans­formed in­to 'whites' and get un­to the play­ing field, Shane Shilling­ford vows to make a Test come­back.

As the Do­mini­can sits in the Grayson and Irv­ing Shilling­ford stand, he sees De­ven­dra Bishoo grabs an­oth­er wick­et and is man enough to ad­mit the Guyanese de­serves his pick on the West In­dies team to play against Aus­tralia.

"Let's be fair and re­al­is­tic, the se­lec­tors have gone for the men who fin­ished num­ber one and two in the do­mes­tic tour­na­ment, De­ven­dra Bishoo and Veerasam­my Per­maul. I have no prob­lems with that be­cause they are be­ing re­ward­ed for a good sea­son and this is how it should be."

Shilling­ford was re­port­ed for a sus­pect bowl­ing ac­tion twice and has been work­ing on get­ting his ac­tion right over the past sea­son.

He has so far played 16 Tests tak­ing 70 wick­ets at 34.55.

He has tak­en five wick­ets or more on six oc­ca­sions and has ac­tu­al­ly grabbed 20 wick­ets in two match­es at Wind­sor Park in Do­mini­ca.

At the mo­ment he is look­ing to force his way back to the top lev­el of the game. "I am still in­volved in a lot of crick­et. play­ing for Wind­wards Vol­ca­noes have kept me busy. We have been train­ing for the up­com­ing Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL), where I will rep­re­sent the St Lu­cia Zouks.

"I am cur­rent­ly wait­ing to join the camp and I am hop­ing for a great tour­na­ment."

Com­ing back from a bowl­ing ban is dif­fi­cult and play on the bowlers mind but Shilling­ford is count­ing his lucky stars that his sup­port team has been there with him.

"I have got­ten a lot of sup­port lo­cal­ly and has done a lot of work with Vas­bert (Drakes). I am now cleared but the work con­tin­ues and I nor­mal­ly do clips of my bowl­ing and send it to Vas­bert and (Richard) Py­bus the crick­et de­vel­op­ment di­rec­tor, for their fur­ther ad­vice on the mat­ter.

"Com­ing from the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and go­ing in­to the first class sea­son I felt good. I am work­ing on a lot of vari­a­tions to still be ef­fec­tive."

Shilling­ford was banned from bowl­ing the doos­ra (de­liv­ery mov­ing away from the right han­der by an off-spin bowler) and still does not bowl it al­though be­ing cleared re­cent­ly. I don't bowl the doos­ra at match­es. I am still work­ing on it and wants to do more work on it be­fore us­ing it again. Vas­bert has been telling me to work on oth­er vari­a­tions like us­ing the crease and flight to get at bats­men.

"I tried this dur­ing the past First Class sea­son with my stock balls, which is the off-break and the arm-ball and did get some suc­cess. Vasi wants me to start us­ing the doos­ra again, he told me it is not a sit­u­a­tion of my cut­ting it out, it is about how com­fort­able I feel us­ing it."

In the mean­time, it is all about get­ting com­fort­able with his ac­tion and look­ing to get back in­to the wick­ets col­umn.