BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Ex­pe­ri­enced in­ter­na­tion­al bat­ting coach, To­by Rad­ford, has raised con­cerns over the po­ten­tial neg­a­tive im­pact of send­ing a de­plet­ed squad to Bangladesh and fears the pull­out by play­ers could have ad­verse im­pli­ca­tions for the im­age of West In­dies crick­et.

The Welsh­man, who spent sev­er­al years as part of the West In­dies coach­ing staff, said he would have pre­ferred to see a full-strength side for the up­com­ing tour in­stead of “half of a first-team”, sup­ple­ment­ed by in­ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers.

And while he is thrilled with the new op­por­tu­ni­ties that will be af­ford­ed oth­er play­ers, Rad­ford ques­tioned whether the tour would en­hance West In­dies crick­et over­all.

“I’m slight­ly dis­ap­point­ed as a West In­dies sup­port­er that the main team isn’t go­ing. I’m de­light­ed it has giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ties for younger play­ers but there are quite a few big names miss­ing,” said Rad­ford, who was a mem­ber of the Caribbean side’s coach­ing staff up un­til two years ago.

“My re­al wor­ry is: is it good for West In­dies crick­et to be send­ing half of a first team and some younger play­ers [to Bangladesh]. Will that af­fect how oth­er coun­tries view them go­ing for­ward?

“I don’t know the an­swers but I’m look­ing on a lit­tle bit dis­ap­point­ed. I’d like to see the best team trav­el every time we go and play.”

Test cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er and white ball skip­per Kieron Pol­lard were the two biggest names in a group of 10 who de­clined se­lec­tion for the Bangladesh tour due to “COVID-19 re­lat­ed con­cerns or per­son­al fears”.

Dar­ren Bra­vo, one of the side’s most ex­pe­ri­enced Test and one-day bats­men, along with Test all-rounder Ros­ton Chase and ex­cit­ing left-han­der Shim­ron Het­my­er al­so opt­ed out, along with big-name one-day stars like Shai Hope, Evin Lewis and Nicholas Pooran.

Rad­ford said he un­der­stood the need for cer­tain play­ers, who had been hun­kered down in bio-se­cure bub­bles in var­i­ous tour­na­ments over the last year, to take a break.

And with­out nam­ing play­ers, he felt there were oth­ers who should have opt­ed to tour be­cause they had played rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle crick­et.

“I can un­der­stand one or two de­cid­ing not to go who per­haps have played a lot of crick­et,” he told Star­com Ra­dio’s Ma­son and Guest crick­et show.

“I think some­one like Ja­son Hold­er who have played a lot of crick­et and been in a lot of bub­bles this year and stuck in his ho­tel room, I can un­der­stand him be­ing tired and need­ing a break.

“But there are a few there I think who are tak­ing a break who maybe don’t need a break.

“And the oth­er thing that’s in­ter­est­ing is that the play­ers who are trav­el­ling and have said they’re hap­py to trav­el are those who on­ly get their salaries from the West In­dies board, and are not get­ting any ex­tra mon­ey play­ing in T20 com­pe­ti­tions.

“A lot of those who have de­cid­ed not to trav­el is ob­vi­ous­ly earn­ing play­ing in the Big Bash or play­ing in the IPL and the bank is pret­ty full for them and prob­a­bly don’t feel they have to go to Bangladesh.”

Pol­lard, Hold­er, Het­my­er and Pooran and Shel­don Cot­trell cam­paigned in the lu­cra­tive IPL last Sep­tem­ber/Oc­to­ber while Hold­er and Pooran fea­tured in the on­go­ing Big Bash.

West In­dies are sched­uled to leave this week­end for the Jan­u­ary 10 to Feb­ru­ary 15 tour which com­pris­es three One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als and two Tests.

(CMC)