Cozier On Cricket: Cover More Grounds, Selectors (11 October 1998)

11 October 1998

Cozier On Cricket: Cover More Grounds, Selectors

by Tony Cozier

Jeff Broomes made a quite startling revelation on a radio call-in programme during the week.

He said that, in the years that he had been manager of the Combined Schools North - five, I think he said - the first time he had seen a national selector at one of their Division 1 matches was when Oliver Brome appeared at the Alleyne School during the last series against Pickwick.

Quite apart from the fact that it begs the question why Broomes, as vice-president of the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) for three terms, could do nothing to alter the indifference, it is surely an indictment of those who pick the Barbados team.

There has long been a perception among players and public that those entrusted with the job of identifying the best players and assembling them into the strongest possible team take their responsibility too lightly.

There is a story, apocryphal perhaps, but no less instructive for that, of the cricket fan once approaching one of the selectors at the Garrison and asking whether he felt Coo Bird had enough form to open the batting for Barbados in the next Shell Shield.

The affinity of cricketers to horse-racing is well established and there surely was a time when most of the Barbados panel could be spotted on several Saturday afternoons beyond the rails rather than beyond the boundary.

That charge has lost much of its validity but, according to Broomes and others similarly aggrieved, absenteeism has remained too prevalent.

There is the logical argument that each selector does not have to see every single player before making up his mind on the XI he wants to represent Barbados.

Even if he does, he might turn up to view a much-touted prospect on the afternoon when he gets a bad decision or a good ball, or when the pitch is so rain-impaired meaningful assessment is impossible, or when his wife is acting up, or his job is on the line, or any one of the myriad reasons for one-off failure.

Clearly, they must also rely on each other's judgment and on the judgment of those observers whose opinions they respect.

It would be even more shocking if, having not attended the Schools North's matches, no selector asked Broomes his views on his best players.

Yet the point, as made by Broomes, was not only that there is no substitute for first-hand knowledge but that the players, and fans, who see no selector around Saturday after Saturday, develop an understandable feeling of rejection.

And they are not appeased by selectors who watch only their own clubs, on the basis that, that way, they see all the others as well.

Conversely, he spoke of the boys' enthusiasm at Oliver Bromes' surprise presence, a unique phenomenon.

In the same call-in programme, one die-hard Maple follower passionately articulated the case for those clubs that feel excluded by the selection policy. He charged there was a Spartan-Empire-BET axis and claimed no one cared about the lesser lights.

It was nothing new and a repetition of similar assertions that were made of Pickwick-Wanderers and, at West Indies level, of Barbados-Guyana in the old days.

There was, undoubtedly, a grain of truth in both cases, as there might be now, but that grain rapidly multiplies in the public's mind when given the chance.

The perennial chairman of selectors, Charlie Griffith, now has a newly-constituted panel under him with Brome and Calvin Hope joining the returning Stephen Farmer.

Hopefully, Brome has immediately set the trend to be followed in future and the schoolboys won't have to wait another five years for another rare visitation.

Source :: The Barbados Nation (https://www.nationnews.com/)