'We should select players who made the commitment' - USACA selector

Barney Jones, chairman of the USA Cricket Association selection committee, has said that the reason many experienced players, including national captain Steve Massiah, were not picked for the upcoming ICC Americas Division One T20 tournament was because they did not attend last weekend's USACA T20 National Championship in Florida.

"We can't afford to pick people just because they played for the US before and they didn't show up or make the commitment," Jones told ESPNcricinfo. "We decided that we will select players who made the commitment to come out to the tournament. In order to get a proper team where people can work together, I believe that if we had picked people who didn't attend the tournament, and everyone knows who was there, that would create some kind of dissension and that's not what we want. I believe we need to get together, not only USACA but the entire cricket community in the United States, we all need to work together for the benefit of cricket and if we do that I think the US can do well because we have a lot of potential."

The stance taken by Jones and his fellow selectors - Wesley King, Amer Afzaluddin and Vijay Beniwal - is a departure from the past where veteran players were routinely chosen to play for the national team despite not appearing at USACA's domestic events. As recently as last October's WCL Division Three in Malaysia, Sushil Nadkarni and Jermaine Lawson were brought on tour despite neither having appeared at August's National Championship but Jones said that the evidence of USA's fifth-place finish that brought about relegation to Division Four made it clear that a different approach was needed.

"We don't have to have superstars on the team but if we have a good team where everyone gets along, works together and knows each other's capabilities, I think we can do well," Jones said. "As selectors, I think it's total disrespect that people didn't show up unless they had a legitimate excuse. If they put it in writing beforehand to the board that they couldn't get time off work or this happened or that happened, I would go along with that, but from experience in the past I don't think it's acceptable. The selection committee agreed, not me as chairman, we agreed we would pick the team based on what we saw over the weekend."

One other area of focus for the selectors was a re-examination of team dynamics based on the ICC's four-year residency eligibility rule. Teams are allowed to field a maximum of two such players in a starting XI, classified as "deemed nationals", who have lived in the country for a minimum of 183 days per year for a four-year period immediately preceding an ICC tournament. The rest of the XI must be players who have lived in the country a minimum of seven years or are citizens. USA selected three deemed nationals - Danial Ahmed, Timil Patel and Lawson - in their squad for Malaysia and when Nadkarni was ruled out of the tournament with injury, USA were essentially down to a 12-man squad because one of Ahmed, Patel and Lawson always had to be left out.

"Based on what happened in Malaysia, we decided we're not going to take three of them because it creates a problem," Jones said. "You have limitations when you do that. So we decided we're not going to go that way again. There's some others who didn't make the reserves because of time eligibility. It makes it very difficult when we have players anything between four and seven years because we can only take two and then you have to look for the best two you want based on the positions." Ahmed and Patel, a left-arm spinner and a legspinning allrounder respectively, were the two deemed nationals to make this squad.

The 14-man squad announced on Tuesday is one of USA's youngest for an ICC tournament with only two players over 31 and five under 25. The only two specialist fast bowlers in the squad, Jasdeep Singh and Hammad Shahid, are 22 and 23. Jasdeep is yet to make his debut while Shahid's only two matches for the senior team came in 2012 when he played a T20 and a 50-over game against Canada in Florida during the Auty Cup series. Jones acknowledged that there was a lack of experience in the pace department, but said it was a reflection of two factors: a general lack of depth as well as absence of Usman Shuja and Elmore Hutchinson from the National Championship.

"That's one of the things we're lacking in this country, genuine fast bowlers across the country. I've seen that over the years. We had them before. But we're going through a period where we don't have genuine fast bowlers. Looking back at the last three tournaments, USA hasn't done well. So it's about time we start rebuilding and try to move forward and give the youngsters a chance to see what they can do. If some of the more experienced players were there in Florida, I'm sure the selection committee would have included some of them, but they weren't there."