T Becca: The life of a WI selector (2 Apr 1998)

April 2, 1998

The life of a WI selector

Tony Becca

CRICKET: Wesley Hall's decision not to make himself available for another term as a West Indies selector has been well received by cricket fans around Jamaica.

Based on telephone calls between Tuesday and yesterday, many Jamaicans are happy. The only disappointment is that his colleagues, Joey Carew and Michael Findlay, have not, at least not yet, followed his lead.

As far as Jamaicans are concerned, the chairman should have stepped down long ago and so too should Carew and Findlay.

According to the callers, the selectors are either incompetent or insular, and the good they have done, selections like that of right-arm legspinner Dinanath Ramnarine are so few and far between that they should be ignored - or better still, interred with their bones.

That is unfortunate, for although selectors, like other people, will always make mistakes, although some of them are weak, they are generally knowledgeable, competent and honest people trying to do a job to the best of their ability.

The problem with West Indies cricket and the selection of the West Indies team is not so much the selectors and their perceived insularity, but some administrators, the majority of fans and their insularity.

Anyone who has been around the people involved with cricket in the territories, anyone who has travelled the islands and Guyana and listened to the fans can testify to the insularity which is eating away at West Indies cricket.

Right around the region there are administrators who behave in a way to suggest that West Indies cricket is of little importance to them - administrators who never miss an opportunity to criticise the West Indies Board and to sing their own praises and except for the obvious, seldom if ever do you hear the fans of one territory talking about the non-selection of a player from another territory.

And it matters not the territory. They are all the same - including Jamaica.

Travel around the territory and ask, for example, who should be the wicketkeeper in the West Indies team and Guyanese, officials and the man in the street, will tell you Vishal Nagamootoo; Barbadians, Ricky Hoyte; Trinidadians, David Williams; the people of the Windward Islands, Junior Murray; and the people of the Leeward Islands, Ridley Jacobs.

Jamaican spectators may not tell you Andre Coley, but as Hall has said, some Jamaican administrators have been whispering in the selectors' ears since last year about the possibilities of the young Jamaican and encouraging his selection on the "A" team - and that while he was still to get into the Jamaica team.

Hall is going, and whether they want to go or not, the reading is that Carew and Findlay may also be history after the WICB's meeting in May.

The change of personnel will not however, bring and end to the uproar which almost always follows the selection of the West Indies team.

Unless there is also a change of attitude in some administrators in the territories, unless there is also a change in the attitude in the majority of fans, it will remain the same - for the simple reason that no man is perfect and also that the selection of a cricket team is one of the most difficult jobs in sport.

What is important however, is that unless the attitude towards selectors changes, there may come a time when no one will want to serve as a selector.

The life of a selector can be miserable around the territories. And it is not because they are incompetent or insular. It is because too many who do not know believe they know, because too many who know believe that they should cater to the hometown bias for their own popularity, and when it comes to insularity, because too many refuse to look in the mirror.

Source :: The Jamaica Gleaner (https://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/)