BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – The se­lec­tion of the West In­dies squad for the ICC T20 World Cup has sparked its first no­table con­tro­ver­sy, with vet­er­an crick­et com­men­ta­tor and ra­dio talk show host An­drew Ma­son open­ly ques­tion­ing the in­clu­sion of 37-year-old wick­et­keep­er-bat­ter John­son Charles.

As the team pre­pares for a cam­paign to be played in In­dia, the de­ci­sion to turn to a play­er whose ca­reer spans near­ly 15 years has raised eye­brows and de­mands ex­pla­na­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the squad break­down by Crick­et West In­dies, Charles is slat­ed to be the sec­ond-choice wick­et­keep­er and a po­ten­tial back­up open­er.

This has ob­vi­ous­ly not sit well with Ma­son, who be­lieves one must put John­son Charles “un­der the mi­cro­scope,” and ex­am­ine the num­bers that pre­sum­ably in­formed the de­ci­sion.

Ac­cord­ing to Ma­son, Miles Bas­combe, Crick­et West In­dies’ da­ta-dri­ven di­rec­tor of crick­et, would have pre­sum­ably pre­sent­ed a de­tailed sta­tis­ti­cal pro­file to head coach Dar­ren Sam­my.

The vet­er­an com­men­ta­tor sure­ly did his num­ber crunch­ing, and the re­cent fig­ures make for in­ter­est­ing, if not com­pelling, read­ing.

The stats show that in his last ten T20 match­es for the re­gion­al side, Charles has scored 210 runs with a high­est score of 47, av­er­ag­ing 21.00 at a strike rate of 117.97.

The right-han­der was part of the West In­dies’ tri­umphant 2016 T20 World Cup-win­ning squad, where his con­tri­bu­tion in that cam­paign was mod­est, with 117 runs across six match­es com­ing at an av­er­age of 19.50 and a strike rate of 108.33.

His over­all ca­reer sta­tis­tics, span­ning 67 match­es since his 2011 de­but, sit at an av­er­age of 22.91 with a more re­spectable ca­reer strike rate of 129.23.

Ac­cord­ing to Ma­son, this is where the se­lec­tion log­ic faces its stiffest chal­lenge. “Over the past year, Crick­et West In­dies has in­vest­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the very tal­ent­ed Jew­el An­drew, cur­rent­ly keep­ing wick­et for the West In­dies at the on­go­ing U-19 World Cup. I have a ques­tion, was that in­vest­ment for­got­ten? I need to know,” Ma­son asked.

Charles’ se­lec­tion will sure­ly gar­ner more in­ter­est, as Caribbean fans wait with bat­ed breath to see if the se­lec­tion was a hit or miss.

CMC