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As many as 15 of the 74 players selected to play for West Indies in Tests since 2000 never got a second chance. If you’ve neither researched it nor given it too much thought, you might easily get the wrong impression.
Bobby, my fo’daymorning walking pardnah, pretended not to care. These days, he has little patience with West Indies cricket in general. But selection is the area that annoys him most—by some distance!
He has long nurtured a theory about the insularity of regional selectors and he repeatedly cites the treatment of Darren Bravo and Lendl Simmons to support his case.
“Gimme a break!” he protested, steupsing loudly almost as soon as I broached the issue early Friday morning. “I really don’t care one faaaaaaaaart. Yuh want my attention? Is Carnival. Sing a 2025 calypso.”
“Hear what,” I countered. “Leh me tell you my story and then maybe you could write yuh own winning kaiso on West Indies cricket. It doh take much, yuh know. Machel win with Soul ah Calypso last year, remember? And Chalkdust win with Calder Hart and I in 2009 and 75 cyar go into 14 in 2017.”
Another loud steups.
(Copyright TUCO.)
“Or,” I taunted, “we could walk in silence fuh two hours…”
“Talk nah, talk nah!” he conceded, a third steups escaping him. “But doh expect me to react.”
With their much bigger populations, you might think, Australia, England and India call on a far larger number of players to service their cricket than WI. In fact, I explained, with a half-century head start from 1877, Australia and England have used far more players overall than WI (1928) and India (1932). And, to further complicate matters, since 2005, there are now not one, not two, but three formats to contend with.
But I had opted to keep it simple by focusing essentially almost exclusively on Test cricket in the 21st Century.
(Copyright AP Photo/ Ricardo Mazalan.)
Bobby: “How many Trinbagonians in the 15? Ten?”
Me: “I didn’t check nationality. But I can tell you that the 74 does not include either Kieron Pollard or Nicholas Pooran. Neither Trini ever wore West Indies whites.”
Bobby: “I know. The selectors didn’t overlook Pollard—he turned down a contract in 2011.”
Me: “But not Pooran, as far as I know. Chief selector Roger Harper said publicly he had to see him actually batting in red-ball cricket before he picked him for a Test.”
Photo: Nicholas Bhajan/ Wired868.
Bobby: “Idiot! West Indies selectors really do some strange things, oui. Even I know about Andy Ganteaume. He play one Test, make a hundred and then get drop, correct?”
Me: “Well, that’s hard to beat. But I can think of two people much closer to the present who also played only one Test.”
Bobby: “Two Trinis, nah?”
Me: “Well, not exactly. Andre Russell is one who never got a second chance. He now plays for Knight Riders in the CPL, right? Wanna guess who is the second one?”
Photo: Nicholas Bhajan/ Wired868.
Bobby: “Nah. Tell me.”
Me: “Well, what if I tell you what people say? Talk is that he only get pick because the captain insist.”
Bobby: “Oh ho, Lincoln Roberts. That was upstart Lara in 1999.
Me: “Bingo!
Bobby: “I remember Colin Croft suggesting Tobago would name a monument after him if he actually made the side.”
Ganteaume scored 112 against England but was never selected again.
Me: “He did. And made a seven-ball duck… Anyway, Australia and England also have 15 players with only one Test to their name in this century. India have only nine.”
Bobby: “Fifteen and nine outta how much?”
Me: “Well, 87 for Australia, India 91 and England 117. But the one-Test figures a little misleading, eh. Quite a few of the people still playing and might get pick again.”
Bobby: “Oh, like [Amir] Jangoo?”
Me: “Yup. His first cap—his only one so far!—was in the First Test in Pakistan in January, which WI quickly lost. But when we cut Pakistan tail in the Second Test, only two of that eleven had started their Test careers before 2020.”
(via CWI Media.)
Bobby: “[Kraigg] Brathwaite and who?”
Me: “[Jomel] Warrican. Kemar Roach, who started in 2009, was also in the 15-member touring party. But six of the 11 had only made their Test debuts in 2024 or after.”
Bobby: “Hmmmm. The selectors didn’t have plenty experience to call on. I remember your Wired story. Over 20 West Indians were playing franchise cricket in the UAE when WI were in Pakistan.”
Me: “Compare the Big Three. India lost to Australia in January, with seven players on each team who had made their Test debut in 2020 or before. Australia had four who debuted in 2011, apart from Steve Smith, who started a year earlier. India had Virat Kohli, debut in 2011, Ravindra Jadeja, 2012, and KL Rahul, 2014.
“England lost to New Zealand in December with Joe Root, debut in 2012, Ben Stokes, 2013, and Ben Duckett, 2016, in their XI.”
Bobby: “I think England selectors pick the best England team. Ditto India and Australia. WI? If the selectors weren’t so biased against Trinis, both Bravo and Simmons might still be playing…”
Me: “No comment—except to say dis: Baz McCullum, a Kiwi, is now the England all-formats coach.”
Bobby: “True!”
Me: “And add that if Miles Bascombe’s new system was already in place, Jason Mohammed wasn’t getting left out either. Runs like water in the four-day tournament. (Loud chuckle) The T&T TTID, Gibran, is his namesake. You think he would have missed that nearly 40-year-old talent?”
Bobby: “It have another 30-something-year-old ‘special talent’ deh wasn’t leaving out fuh sure. Remember when chairman of selectors Courtney Browne call 250-plus-pound Rahkeem Cornwall that?”
Me: “Well, one-time vice-captain Jermaine Blackwood is 30-something too, with more than 50 Tests under his belt. He just told the media he will be back.”
Bobby: “I think he has three centuries and almost 20 fifties.”
Me: “But none of that matters now. He obviously hasn’t impressed [Daren] Sammy. If he can’t impress Delroy Morgan, the TTID for Jamaica, selector bias or no selector bias, crapaud smoke he pipe!”
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