West Indies: Cozier on Cricket (6 Sep 1998)

6 September 1998

Cozier on Cricket

The Barbados Nation

We keep on trying but the thought processes of our cricket selectors continue to baffle us.

There is good and understandable reason for this. Just listen to the radio call-in programmes or assemble half-dozen fans in any one place and not many minds agree on who should be in any team and who shouldn't.

Attempting to unravel the reasoning behind the composition of the 'A' team to India announced last week, it remains particularly perplexing in at least a couple of areas.

On the previous evidence of those chosen for tours of Sri Lanka and South Africa, we must assume the selectors use the 'A' team for a variety of causes.

It is, at one and the same time, a rehabilitation ward for ailing Test players, a trial for those identified as prospective Test players and experience for talented youth, all under the captaincy of an established and level-headed stalwart (Roger Harper in Sri Lanka, Jimmy Adams in South Africa, Ian Bishop now).

Some have taken advantage of the chance, too many others haven't.

Sri Lanka allowed Stuart Williams to jump-start his stalled Test career as South Africa did Jimmy Adams. Robert Samuels didn't have the same success.

Rawl Lewis, Dinanath Ramnarine, Floyd Reifer and Nixon McLean graduated into the Test team. Leon Garrick, Dave Joseph, Ricky Hoyte, Laurie Williams, Tony Powell and several others have been left by the wayside.

Of the young brigade, Pedro Collins and Reon King made obvious advances in South Africa and cannot be too far from further promotion.

Ramnaresh Sarwan is yet to fulfil his promise, Avidesh Samaroo has vanished from the scene since his trip to Sri Lanka and Mahendra Nagamootoo has Ramnarine and Lewis ahead of him as leg-spinners.

Given a similar method of selection for this side, Sherwin Campbell in particular, as well as Reifer, Lewis, Adrian Griffith and Courtney Browne can reclaim their status in a Test side that could still do with a steady opener, a settled No. 6 and a reliable wicket-keeper.

Collins and King are retained as the next in the fast bowling line and Sarwan, again, and the highly recommended, but untried and virtually unknown, wicket-keeper Wayne Phillip are the young men carried along for the international exposure.

So far, so good, even if there have been the inevitable and, in some cases, reasonable arguments over individual preferences.

Where is Roland Holder? Why no batting room for Garrick or Tony Powell? What about Vishu Nagamootoo or Andrew Coley as young keepers? What's happened to Laurie Williams? And why Ian Bishop at all?

Yet the set principles have been more or less followed.

Where the selection becomes incomprehensible is in three of the four new players.

While it is not difficult to visualise Neil McGarrell, the left-arm spinner from Guyana, fitting easily into the Test team even now, just as he did in his One-Day international against England, Keith Semple, Richard Smith and Carl Tuckett simply don't have the credentials to suggest that they will ever develop into Test cricketers.

Semple and Tuckett are both 28, Smith 27. It is all very well to point out that Clayton Lambert came back into the side at 36 but he had the reasonable recommendation of 20 first-class hundreds and an average of 45.

In nine seasons for Guyana, Semple averages 27.83; in eight for Trinidad and Tobago, Smith averages 21.41. In all that time, each has managed a solitary hundred. Is the batting cupboard really that bare?

Tuckett may be a useful all-rounder, suited to the One-Day game. But Test material?

And surely it is Test material that the 'A' team is designed to seek out and develop.

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