In life, re­flec­tion is al­ways good and at times even in­tro­spec­tion as­sists with both per­son­al dilem­mas or sit­u­a­tions, close to your heart.

Sev­er­al per­sons (not on­ly in T&T) use ob­jec­tiv­i­ty to in­su­late their al­ready tar­nished opin­ions (based on a de­tectable as­sump­tion of bias) but the truth is that the ma­jor­i­ty is scarce­ly ever wrong, es­pe­cial­ly when it in­cludes, not on­ly T&T but al­so Bar­ba­dos, An­tigua, St Lu­cia, Guyana and Ja­maica.

Over the last sev­en days, I have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak to var­i­ous per­sons from these coun­tries or ap­pear on pro­grammes, re­lat­ed to crick­et. At times, I al­most for­get that crick­et unites, as much as many will try to make us be­lieve oth­er­wise.

The fact is, some would like us to be­lieve that Dar­ren Bra­vo’s age by the next World Cup in 2027 should be im­por­tant and the on­ly cri­te­ria for non-se­lec­tion.

There is no need to re­peat all of the suc­cess­es of Bra­vo over the last three years and most crit­i­cal­ly, his top­ping of the bat­ting av­er­ages and runs this sea­son.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, the West In­dies won a match on Sun­day against a weak and in­ex­pe­ri­enced Eng­land team but the Caribbean did not cel­e­brate. Crick­et is now off the field as against on the field as it should be.

In Oc­to­ber, I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak with both the pres­i­dent of Crick­et West In­dies Dr Kishore Shal­low and the di­rec­tor of crick­et op­er­a­tions Miles Bas­combe and I took both men at face val­ue when they agreed that “Com­mu­ni­ca­tion" in West In­dies crick­et had to be im­proved even at the se­lec­to­r­i­al lev­el. How­ev­er, sad­ly for both men (even with their best in­ten­tions), that has not ma­te­ri­alised. It is per­haps a sit­u­a­tion that they may have prob­lems solv­ing go­ing for­ward but on­ly time will tell.

No­tably, Dr Shal­low has stepped for­ward and re­vealed that age is not a cri­te­ri­on in any team se­lec­tion or re­jec­tion pol­i­cy. So will Desmond Haynes now re­spond to this?

CWI has been hurt by this and I would even sug­gest that a win against a clear­ly ex­per­i­men­tal Eng­land team, would not erase the er­rors that have been made. I fore­see that Dr Shal­low is on a ten­u­ous reign that could be cut short, de­pend­ing on where he turns, he is not in an en­vi­able po­si­tion but one where his lega­cy can be de­ter­mined.

At least, he and his team can be hap­py that Bra­vo’s omis­sion has unit­ed the West In­dies on in­jus­tice and lack of trans­paren­cy. Of course, those of us who know Bra­vo very well, un­der­stand the tur­moil he re­ceived pre­vi­ous­ly un­der a pre­vi­ous pres­i­dent (los­ing over three years of his crick­et­ing ca­reer on a mat­ter that should have been sort­ed in days). There are times when you pick bat­tles be­cause you are wronged and you pay a price.

Im­por­tant­ly, his­to­ry is respite with per­sons who have suf­fered mem­o­ry laps­es, when on one day, they say “One Thing" and on an­oth­er day “Some­thing Else”.

Here are some ex­cerpts of Haynes (ap­point­ed in Jan­u­ary 2022 un­til June 30, 2024):

At a me­dia con­fer­ence in Oc­to­ber 2022, Haynes who sued West In­dies crick­et for not be­ing se­lect­ed at age 39 in 1995 is quot­ed as say­ing the fol­low­ing: “We would just like for Bra­vo to get back in some form and play­ing for his fran­chise in Trinidad will prob­a­bly help. His re­cent form, re­al­ly he’s not per­form­ing well and as a new group of se­lec­tors, we made it very clear that we’re go­ing to give op­por­tu­ni­ties to peo­ple and try to broad­en the pool and make sure we start think­ing about 2023 as well.”

Then in Feb­ru­ary 2023, again at an­oth­er me­dia in­ter­ac­tion as Haynes turned 67 he is quot­ed as say­ing: "I think we in the Caribbean don’t have the lux­u­ry to re­al­ly talk about age not be­ing on some­one’s side. If some­one is do­ing very well in our com­pe­ti­tion, I think his name must come up for se­lec­tion.”

Now wait, did Haynes men­tion - age - is not a fac­tor in Feb­ru­ary 2023, the month of his birth­day and Dar­ren Bra­vo’s as well? Bra­vo turned 34.

Haynes then con­tin­ues: “I think Bra­vo has proven he can play crick­et at the high­est lev­el and it is just a mat­ter of if we can get the guys that are re­al­ly com­mit­ted and who re­al­ly want to play. But Bra­vo is a class act. He has done well at Test lev­el and he had a pe­ri­od where he just lost his form and so forth but we know that Bra­vo is good enough to make runs at this lev­el and we will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor Bra­vo’s progress as he goes along in this four-day com­pe­ti­tion."

Fast for­ward to No­vem­ber 2023 and Haynes says, "Dar­ren has proven not on­ly this year but last year in the Su­per50 tour­na­ment, to be some­body who per­forms well at this lev­el.

“But we have in­vest­ed in play­ers like Al­ick Athanaze and Kea­cy Car­ty, and we just fig­ured that in se­lect­ing this team, we al­so had to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that the World Cup 2027 is some­thing that we’ve got in mind…And we be­lieve we’ve in­vest­ed in these play­ers and be­lieve we should give them the op­por­tu­ni­ty of play­ing against a very strong Eng­land side.”

Well af­ter all of this, even the strength of the Eng­land team, Haynes has ob­vi­ous­ly got wrong as their young­sters and their lack of crick­et­ing knowl­edge is very ev­i­dent. Eng­land has giv­en some play­ers a rest af­ter a dis­mal per­for­mance at the World Cup.

Haynes stat­ed Shane Dowrich (out of crick­et for three years) was se­lect­ed to bat the mid­dle overs as he is very good against spin but it ap­pears Dowrich did not get the memo as a few days af­ter his se­lec­tion to the team, he sur­pris­ing­ly an­nounced his re­tire­ment. Oops!

No­tably, CWI has shirked its col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ig­nored a re­sponse to the ques­tion if the vote to omit Bra­vo was unan­i­mous or if it was a split de­ci­sion. Yet again a com­mu­ni­ca­tion fail­ure.

What should per­plex all of us is the fol­low­ing, Haynes was ap­point­ed a West In­dies crick­et Di­rec­tor in 2005 so he should there­fore know all about the work­ings of West In­dies crick­et and there­fore should be aware of the im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Al­so in re­view­ing Haynes' in­volve­ment and roles in West In­dies crick­et, apart from the full-time coach­ing job (which he re­port­ed­ly ap­plied for and lost to Phil Sim­mons), he has been around the course in West In­dies crick­et, hold­ing near­ly every po­si­tion from his de­but in 1979 against Aus­tralia.

A CWI press re­lease on Jan­u­ary 6, 2022, em­a­nat­ing from An­tigua stat­ed this: “The Most Hon. Dr Haynes will lead the West In­dies Men’s Se­lec­tion Pan­el un­til June 30, 2024, a pe­ri­od that in­cludes four ICC Glob­al Events, two T20 World Cups (2022 and 2024), the Crick­et World Cup (2023) and the World Test Cham­pi­onship Fi­nal (2023).”

The re­al­i­ty is that the West In­dies failed to qual­i­fy for the T20 (2022) World Cup, the One Day In­ter­na­tion­al World Cup (2023) and the World Test Cham­pi­onships (2023), so there­fore, Haynes has failed at three of the four out­lined tour­na­ments, with on­ly next year's T20 World Cup to be held in the re­gion left in the bare cup­board. It is an atro­cious run as a se­lec­tor.

Dr Shal­low, hailed as a young bright star of West In­dies crick­et, con­tin­ues to wait to do the ho­n­ourable thing but let us hope that his wait while in vain, may not al­so prove to be his end­ing. He tru­ly ap­pears to have a lot to con­tribute.