ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Ramnaresh Sar­wan has quit abrupt­ly as a men’s se­nior se­lec­tor just five months in­to his 2-½ year term, leav­ing Crick­et West In­dies scram­bling to find a re­place­ment.

The for­mer West In­dies cap­tain, who al­so sat on the youth se­lec­tion pan­els, was ap­point­ed on 6 Jan­u­ary and was ex­pect­ed to serve in the role un­til June 24 but CWI said Mon­day he had re­signed his post “due to per­son­al rea­sons”.

Robert Haynes, the cur­rent chief men’s youth se­lec­tor, will be the in­ter­im re­place­ment for Sar­wan un­til CWI com­pletes the search for a per­ma­nent can­di­date.

“Giv­en the depth of his ex­pe­ri­ence in the game, we are dis­ap­point­ed that Ramnaresh is un­able to con­tin­ue in the role of se­lec­tor, but we ful­ly un­der­stand and ac­cept his rea­sons,” said di­rec­tor of crick­et, Jim­my Adams.

“We are grate­ful for his con­tri­bu­tion dur­ing the pe­ri­od he was in­volved and hope that he will be able to con­tribute to West In­dies Crick­et in some ca­pac­i­ty in the fu­ture.”

Pri­or to join­ing the CWI pan­el, the 41-year-old Sar­wan was chair­man of the Guyana’s Crick­et Board se­nior se­lec­tion com­mit­tee, a role he sub­se­quent­ly quit to avoid any con­flict of in­ter­ests.

Along with men’s chair­man of se­lec­tors the Most Hon­or­able Desmond Haynes and head coach Phil Sim­mons, Sar­wan was ex­pect­ed to over­see se­lec­tion of squads for key tour­na­ments like the 2022 and 2024 Twen­ty20 World Cups and next year’s 50-over World Cup.

Un­der the new pan­el’s watch, West In­dies beat Eng­land 1-0 in a three-Test se­ries in the Caribbean back in March and Sar­wan’s last in­volve­ment would have come in choos­ing the One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al squads for the on­go­ing tour of the Nether­lands and up­com­ing se­ries against Pak­istan.

CWI said it would pro­ceed quick­ly with fill­ing the va­cant post.

“CWI will ini­ti­ate a re­cruit­ment process for the se­lec­tor role as soon as pos­si­ble through a com­pet­i­tive process, based on es­tab­lished cri­te­ria,” the board said in a state­ment.

“The aim will be to com­plete this process in the short­est pos­si­ble time so that a suit­able can­di­date can com­plete the se­lec­tion pan­el in car­ry­ing out its du­ties.”

Sar­wan, a styl­ish right-han­der, played 81 Tests scor­ing 5 842 and 15 cen­turies, and fea­tured in 181 ODIs, gath­er­ing 5 804 runs with five hun­dreds.

(CMC)