Has the Jaggernauth stopped?

	Amit Jaggernauth has been dropped after a solitary Test © DigicelCricket.com/Brooks La Touche Photography

Just days after Tony Cozier was calling for a 'save our spinners' campaign, the West Indies selectors dropped Amit Jaggernauth. They were sending a message that, like the Japanese whalers prowling the Antartic Ocean, not even the disruptive antics of Greenpeace activists will shake their resolve.

At least Sulieman Benn is still in the squad for the second Test, although with Jerome Taylor expected to return to action at the Sir Viv Richards Stadium and the faster bowlers accounting for 19 of the 20 Australian wickets that fell at Sabina Park, it's unlikely that the gangling left-arm orthodox spinner will be doing more than 12th-man duties in Antigua.

Benn could actually be busier than if he was in the final XI, seeing how specialist slow bowlers have been nothing more than peripheral indulgences in West Indian sides over the past three decades, and given that players these days are always either signalling frantically to the dressing room for something or running off the field every five minutes.

A Caribbean spinner being discarded after his Test debut is hardly a groundbreaking development, but it must be especially galling for Jaggernauth that his place is essentially being taken by Xavier Marshall, an opening batsman who averaged 4.25 runs per innings in two Test matches in Sri Lanka in 2005. He has an overall first-class average of 25 from 17 matches spread over five seasons and is yet to score a first-class hundred.

It is no secret that Marshall has had his disciplinary challenges in the years since first coming to regional prominence as a member of the West Indies squad that lifted the Under-15 World Cup eight years ago. But even if his attitude and focus have improved considerably in recent times, does that merit selection as one of four openers (Chris Gayle, Devon Smith, and Brenton Parchment are the others) in a squad of 14?

Maybe before the axe was dropped, Jaggernauth should have mentioned to someone in the team management that he started his cricket career as an opening batsman, so the word would have been passed on to Messrs Gordon Greenidge, Andy Roberts and Clyde Butts that he might be worth a gamble at the top of the order. Seeing that performance is no longer a fundamental criterion- Parchment's first-class average from 41 matches spread over nine seasons is 25.71, while this year, he averaged 20.71 in four matches for Jamaica and 13.25 after four innings against the Australians - Jaggernauth could perhaps push for a nomination as an option to face the new ball in Tests.

At least there are a handful of discarded spinners of fairly recent vintage back home with whom Jaggernauth, who must be feeling so sour that he could season one of those whales the Japanese are hunting down, can commiserate. There's Dave Mohammed (13 wickets at 51.38 in five matches spread over four series), Rajindra Dhanraj (8 wickets at 74.37 in four matches spread over four series in four different continents) and Dinanath Ramnarine (45 wickets at 30.73 in 12 matches over five series).

But wait, Ramnarine's stats sound almost impressive. Sorry, I lost my head. He's a spinner, so the same standards by which cricketers with long run-ups are measured, don't apply.

Jaggernauth can always have a word with Rangy Nanan (4 wickets at 22.75 in a winning team against Pakistan in Faisalabad in 1980/81) or Imtiaz Ali (2 wickets at 44.50 when India reached a then record 406 to win at the Queen's Park Oval in 1976) about what it's like to play three Tests in one: first, last and only. And I'm sure Pascall Roberts (England, 1969) and Harold Joseph (Australia, 1981-82) can speak at length about what it was like to be on a West Indies tour and not get a pick for any of the international matches.

Yet, more than just being another casualty in the continuing short-sighted disregard for the art of spin bowling in West Indies cricket, Jaggernauth's experience in Kingston was made all the more distressing for the final act on Monday afternoon, coming in as the last man and adjudged by umpire Russell Tiffin to be caught off bat and pad at short-leg. The ball from leg-spinner Stuart MacGill was closer to the Kingston Cricket Club than the edge of Jaggernauth's blade.

Sport can be a very cruel thing and the final cut feels so much more painful when, as in Jaggernauth's case, his body language throughout the match suggested that he didn't feel he was really part of the team. That alienation was evident when Fidel Edwards chose to walk off to the non-striker's end by the time Jaggernauth reached the middle following Daren Powell's dubious demise. No cursory touching of gloves. No word of advice. Nothing, before Tiffin administered the final insult.

If he's good enough and wants it bad enough, Jaggernauth will be back in the reckoning sooner rather than later. But, like so many spinners before him from every point along the Caribbean chain, he will appreciate that reaping a harvest of regional wickets is the easy part.

Hacking through the dense jungle of indifference that is suffocating one of cricket's classic crafts here in the West Indies will need a lot more persistence, not to mention a tough hide, especially as recent events suggest that even wet paper will cut him right now.