BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Fast bowl­ing leg­end Sir Andy Roberts has be­moaned the lack of “set­tled unit” ahead of next month’s Twen­ty20 World Cup, and be­lieves West In­dies will not find it “easy” to qual­i­fy for the main draw of the tour­na­ment.

The 71-year-old, al­so a for­mer se­lec­tor, said the 15-man squad an­nounced for the Oc­to­ber 16 to No­vem­ber 13 cam­paign re­flect­ed too much chop­ping and chang­ing at this ad­vanced stage of prepa­ra­tions.

As ev­i­dence, he point­ed to the in­clu­sion of un­capped all-rounders Yan­nic Cari­ah and Ray­mon Reifer, bats­man John­son Charles—who has not fea­tured for West In­dies in six years—and fast bowler Shel­don Cot­trell, who has not played a T20 In­ter­na­tion­al in sev­en months.

“When you’re prepar­ing, you’re prepar­ing months ahead and you try to set­tle on a team that goes out on the field from the first game,” Sir Andy told Star­com Ra­dio’s Ma­son and Guest crick­et pro­gramme.

“For that fi­nal XI, you don’t keep try­ing this and try­ing that un­til the end—you try in the ear­li­er parts. I think by now with all those T20s that we played in the last year, we should have a set­tled team go­ing in­to the World Cup, in­stead of bring­ing new play­ers in—some who haven’t played T20s for near­ly ten years.

“All of a sud­den we’re res­ur­rect­ing peo­ple try­ing to build a team, when we should have the team al­ready.

“And all you do [at this stage] is for dif­fer­ent games, you just bring in one [play­er] so that you have a set­tled unit. I don’t know if any­one can say our T20 team is set­tled.”

He added, “Cari­ah has not been play­ing any T20 crick­et … I’m won­der­ing, how did he get picked? On what ba­sis was his se­lec­tion war­rant­ed?

“Cot­trell has been thrown aside and all of a sud­den he’s back. On what ba­sis? Ray­mon Reifer? On what ba­sis are you pick­ing Ray­mon Reifer?”

West In­dies will have to nav­i­gate a tricky eight-team pre-tour­na­ment qual­i­fy­ing se­ries in or­der to make it in­to the main draw. In­stalled in Group B, they will take on Scot­land, Ire­land and Zim­bab­we, with the top two teams in each group ad­vanc­ing.

Two-time World cham­pi­ons, the Caribbean side are heav­i­ly favoured to eas­i­ly make it through but Sir Andy said qual­i­fi­ca­tion could prove a more dif­fi­cult task than ex­pect­ed.

“I don’t think it is go­ing to be easy to qual­i­fy. I don’t think so,” Sir Andy warned.

“We don’t have a set­tled team. We fid­dled around with the team and that is our biggest prob­lem. If you don’t know what your team­mates are ca­pa­ble of do­ing be­cause he just comes in­to the team, [that is a prob­lem].

“When West In­dies was at its best, we had a set­tled team for five, ten years and if you check on Aus­tralia, Aus­tralia has a set­tled team, Pak­istan has a set­tled team.

“In­dia are fid­dling around with their team and look at the prob­lems they’re hav­ing now. You need set­tled teams.”

He added, “We’re go­ing with a num­ber of new play­ers, new to the in­ter­na­tion­al scene. We know that this World Cup was go­ing to be this year. We know that from long time so we should have been try­ing our best to make sure we have a unit that was ready to go from ball one.”

The squad will be led by Nicholas Pooran with Rov­man Pow­ell as vice-cap­tain, and in­cludes the likes of all-rounder Ja­son Hold­er, mid­dle or­der bats­man Shim­ron Het­my­er and open­er Evin Lewis, the lat­ter of whom has not played for West In­dies since the last T20 World Cup al­most a year ago.(CMC)