Cozier on cricket: Who Jagdeo think he is?

Bjharrat Jagdeo's presidential admonishment last week might have been careless but it was neither surprising nor unique.

"I think Carl Hooper has demonstrated that he should be part of the West Indies team and I urge the WICB and the selectors' panel to include Carl Hooper in the next Test match," the Guyana president said in support of his country's captain.

Why the president should have felt moved to publicly advise those with expertise in the subject on the complex issue of the selection of a West Indies cricket team is open to interpretation. But politicians, wherever and whoever they are, have the uncanny ability of spotting an advancing bandwagon from a mile off, even in the thickest fog, and of jumping on with a leap that would please Carl Lewis. And there is no more inviting vehicle in the Caribbean than West Indies cricket, as several government leaders have recognised over the years.

When the selectors wouldn't accept Garry Sobers' word that he was fit and refused to pick him for the 1973 home series against Australia, Trinidad and Tobago's Prime Minister Eric Williams criticised them for discarding the great left-hander "like an old car".

Barbados Minister of Tourism at the time, Dennis Hunte, said Sobers "on one leg was better than most of the rest".

That same year, one of Jagdeo's predecessors, Forbes Linden Burnham, flew Clive Lloyd back from Australia, where he was playing club cricket, when the WICB wouldn't. Lloyd rewarded him with an innings of 178 at Bourda and, of course, was soon to be West Indies captain.

More recently, Grenada's Prime Minister Keith Mitchell has repeatedly and strongly put the case for Junior Murray.

All such political interference achieves is to patently undermine the fabric of West Indies cricket. The selectors are under pressure enough from the general public. Their task is impossibly compromised when those holding the highest post in the land put in their two-cents worth.

I know Mitchell to be a passionate cricket lover. He is a former captain of Grenada. His government has built the most modern cricket stadium in the Caribbean and now hosts the Shell Cricket Academy.

Jagdeo's cricketing credentials are less well documented but it must be accepted that he, too, is a cricket aficionado.

But when they speak on the game, they do so not as ordinary cricket fans but as president and prime minister. As such they have a special responsibility to stand clear of the emotionalism and insularity that are the bugbears of West Indies cricket.

As it is, Hooper doesn't needs the support of Jagdeo or anyone else. The only way for him to be recalled is for him to prove his consistency and his commitment to the selectors. Both have been open to question in the past.

He has done that and, even those of us concerned with his previous record of under-achievement and indifference and keen to look to the future, are prepared to concede that he is now worth his place again.

The question, as it always was going to be, is who will have to make way to accommodate him. If it is one of the talented young players who have recently had a taste of Test cricket, it is to be hoped that there is no proclamation from President Jagdeo bemoaning the omission of Ramnaresh Sarwan, or Prime Minister P.J. Patterson railing over the exclusion of Marlon Samuels or Basdeo Panday and his seven unelected cabinet ministers demanding to know why Darren Ganga is not in the team.

As it is, the selectors are already facing some awkward decisions. They have advice coming at them from all directions. They should be spared the public thoughts of their political leaders who, you would think, have enough problems of their own.