Selectors failed to make Smart decisions, says former HK skipper Tim

Hong Kong's failure to reach the final qualifying round for the 2011 World Cup rests with the tour selectors failing to put out the best side, says former captain Tim Smart.

'I don't think the best side was picked,' Smart (pictured) said. 'Why didn't Courtney Kruger get a game at all? Looking at the team which was picked, I believe we could have done so much more if the right guys had been in the side.'

Hong Kong finished fourth in the six-team ICC World Cricket League Division Three tournament in Buenos Aires last week. Afghanistan and Uganda, who Hong Kong lost to by 13 runs and one run respectively, booked their tickets for the final World Cup qualifiers in South Africa in April.

Captain Tabarak Dar and coach Aftab Habib were the selectors on tour, but Dar had the final say.

'He was the guy leading the troops out and he had the bigger say in selection,' Habib revealed. 'I would say my bit and he would say his bit, and then he would have the final say. My role ended at the white line [boundary].

'This is something we had done in the past, but unfortunately it didn't work out this time,' said Habib, conceding that maybe they had got it wrong in team selection.

Hong Kong can only reflect on how close they came to making it into the final 12, from which the four teams to play in the 2011 World Cup will be decided.

The team will next see action at the ACC Twenty20 tournament in November in Dubai, the qualifiers for next year's Asian Games. There are bound to be a number of changes.

One person whose head will be on the chopping block is skipper Dar, who, according to Smart, should have dropped himself as he was failing with the bat.

'I'm sure everyone was trying their hardest out there, but shouldn't the younger guys like Courtney and Skhawat Ali have been given a chance, especially when a few 'senior' players were struggling?' asked Smart.

Dar totalled 39 runs from five innings, his highest score being 19. He had opened the batting before, but the selectors at home requested he move down the order in Argentina. He struggled, like the rest of the middle order, to make runs.

'One of the biggest problems we faced was picking our batting order,' Dar said. 'It wasn't made any easier with the conditions favouring the bowlers, especially the seamers.

'But we didn't become a bad team in two days [after beating Argentina and Cayman Islands]. I was not totally out of sorts. What cost us was the conditions out there. It was tough for batting.'

His view is supported by the fact a total of 200 was generally a winning score on the green and seamer-friendly wickets in Buenos Aires. The highest score by a batsman in the tournament was Hong Kong vice-captain Manoj Cheruparambil's 85 against Cayman Islands.

Cheruparambil was one of the success stories, the other being Zain Abbas. They were the only two to total more than 100 runs. And Cheruparambil was not picked for the opening two matches against Argentina and Afghanistan.

Apart from Cheruparambil, who averaged 47.14, Habib said the rest of the top order had let Hong Kong down.

'We were not clever enough and didn't adapt to the conditions. We didn't have the cutting edge like some of the other teams,' Habib said. 'We just couldn't keep on relying on the lower order to get us runs.'

But batting was not the only problem, according to Dar, who said the lack of more genuine seamers had also cost Hong Kong.

'We played Afghanistan on a green top and had one genuine seamer in Irfan [Ahmed], while Roy [Lamsam] was a part-time bowler. Unfortunately, they both started badly and gave away a lot of runs. We didn't have any other seamers to fall back on,' Dar said.

'It would be simplifying it to say we lost because of our batting, or because I didn't score runs. We tried our best. I tried my best, but unfortunately it didn't quite work for us,' Dar added.

Missing in action

Manoj Cheruparambil wasn't selected against Argentina despite scoring (against the Cayman Islands): 85