Spinning top in cricket mud

THE EDITOR: It is good to see the Test team fighting the good fight against Bangladesh, although we still need the powers that be to understand cricket or get people in positions who understand the game.

Why is Shai Hope not on the West Indies team as captain and opener? Kraigg Braithwaite has reached his level of incompetence. The new players are proving their worth although not as consistent as they should, but the leadership is not there.

The ODI team has had mixed results, again no consistency, and the same can be said for the T20 team. While the Test team is managing without a coach (not sure of Andre Coley’s claim to fame), the appointment of Daren Sammy as ODI and T20 coach leaves much to be desired.

Sammy is out of his depth as a coach of a cricketing nation going up against the likes of India, Australia and England. He lacks the technical aspects of the game, which is the difference between winning and losing. Sammy never shows any different facial expression if the WI is losing or winning.

Apparently he is stuck in his plan A and nothing else counts. Running around the field and talking to the players during a game is not the job of a coach, especially in cricket.

Sammy could be a very good mentor but as a coach he is a failure, he does not have the experience or analytic capabilities to function in the position.

CWI needs help and we keep looking in the wrong places. We keep hiring and firing Phil Simmons but he always produces an underdog team to beat the West Indies.

The entire CWI management team needs to resign and give the jobs to those who can manage. However, there is the eat-a-food mentality in our cricket, just as in some of the Caribbean countries’ politics.

The countries making up the CWI should take full responsibility for the state of affairs in West Indies cricket since we put these people to run our favourite pastime. The CWI is not functioning as it should be when it comes to the development of cricket in the region.

We often hear this is the best team and that is the best team we have had in years and we still get blown away by some of the minnows in cricket. Maybe we might end up in the same bracket as Ivory Coast who got bowled out for seven runs, creating a new record-low score in international cricket.

The next hype will be the IPL and the West Indies have a sum total of eight players coming out of the draft. The great West Indies – and more so TT – has from the inception of T20 provided some of the best players ever seen.

I was hoping for more players in the draft picks but we are doing absolutely nothing to get our players up to the standard necessary to conquer the world in the format we invented.

India has just unleashed a 13-year-old in the IPL. Where are the talented West Indians?

I cannot speak for the other territories since I do not know how they appoint their boards, but in TT the TTCB members can only leave if they die since the structure is such that the outgoing slate could never lose. The clubs are responsible for this since most of them function in the same mode as the board.

Most of the other sports in Trinidad are almost dead and cricket will reach there in a bit. The only option for TT cricketers is to migrate to the US (if Trump allows) to seek their fortune.

We are forever spinning top in mud in Trinidad and West Indies cricket.

LARRY SOOKLALSINGH

via e-mail

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