West Indies' selectors strike again

Given their obvious limitations, West Indies overreached themselves to make it as far as the semi-finals of the ICC World Twenty20 championships.

Their notorious unpredictability, as that of Pakistan who have gone one better to contest today's final against Sri Lanka at Lord's, has been one of the features of a wonderful tournament that further enhances the reputation of the game's newest incarnation. But they lacked the depth needed to go all the way.

There was a shortage of the aggressive batting and creative strokeplay essential for 20 overs, only compounded by the successive ducks in the last four matches by Chris Gayle's immature opening partners.

Held back to Nos.5 and 6, the only real contributions from Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shivnarine Chanderpaul, on whom so much depends in the longer game, came in their calm, match-winning partnership against England, but that required just three overs. The main bowlers, Jerome Taylor, Fidel Edwards and Dwayne Bravo, were inconsistent and incapable of the repeated yorkers Sri Lanka's Lasith Malinga, Pakistan's Umar Gul and South Africa's 19-year-old left-armer Wayne Parnell showed are so crucial in restricting gung-ho batsmen.

Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the other semi-finalists, South Africa, each used three spinners, two of the highest class. Sri Lanka's finger-flicking mystery man, Anjantha Mendis, hoodwinked more batsmen than just the clueless young West Indians on Friday. The solitary West Indies' tweaker was the worthy left-armer Sulieman Benn. And, as usual, the fielding was slapdash, even more of an affliction in such compressed cricket.

Unseeded, along with Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands, and placed in the qualifying round in what is known, in any sport, as the "group of death", alongside Australia and Sri Lanka, the West Indies yet managed to overcome such handicaps and go as far as they did. Three factors effectively got them through to meet Sri Lanka on Friday at the Oval where their shortcomings were starkly exposed by opponents strong in all the areas where they were weakest.

Gayle's typically awesome 88 off 50 balls trumped Australia in the first match, Bravo's all-round brilliance (66 not out and 4 for 38) took care of India and the Duckworth-Lewis reduction favoured them against England. While such triumphs lifted the depression that hung so heavy after the preceding humiliation in the Tests and ODIs against England, Friday's defeat came as a reality check.

It marked the end of exactly two months' cricket against assorted opposition and of every variety (Tests, first-class and 50 and 20-overs limits) during which West Indies cricket made no advance. If anything, it went backwards. Even before it started, it was obvious the players were peeved with the way the unscheduled series in England was hurriedly arranged without consultation with their association. The mood was only aggravated by the late arrival of captain Gayle and Edwards from the IPL, the puzzling absence of Bravo for the Tests, May's biting cold, and home opponents bent on vengeance for their loss of the Wisden Trophy in the Caribbean only weeks before.

Once in England, Gayle openly proclaimed himself exhausted by a surfeit of cricket and keen to escape the pressures of Test cricket and the captaincy. They are issues that the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) needed to urgently address but, with a home Test series against Bangladesh starting in less than a month, still haven't.

Gayle has made his position clear. He does not want the captaincy. Nor, it seems, does anyone else for the position has become a poisoned chalice and strong characters are in short supply. Yet a replacement is needed immediately. Denesh Ramdin is vice-captain and, as such, next in line. Given such a background, the outcome of the Tests and the ODIs was as predictable as the attitude was lamentable and unprofessional. The improvement in the World Twenty20, a tournament long since on the programme, was instructive.

Such is the way of the modern world of international cricket that the West Indies hop right back onto the merry-go-round on Friday for the first of four ODIs in Jamaica. The selectors have come up with a squad that reflects a mental state of confusion, presumably triggered by events in England.

They have dropped Lendl Simmons and Darren Sammy, aged 24 and 25, two admirable young cricketers of all-round potential in whom a lot has already been invested and two of the better performers in the World Twenty20. Simmons' 77 off 50 balls against South Africa was batting of genuine class. He had 44 against India, along with three catches, among them one of the best of the tournament, and took 4 for 19 with his medium-pace in the opening round against Sri Lanka.

Sammy, inexplicably underrated and repeatedly disregarded, was omitted from earlier Tests and ODIs and only got in for the last two Twenty20s when Edwards' back went. Given the new ball, his response was to concede a mere 33 off his eight overs combined, grab a superb catch in the deep and, like Simmons, lift the intensity of the fielding. Committed and enthusiastic, they should be integral to the development of West Indies cricket. Instead, they are rejected, as they have been more than once before.

So who have the wise panel of Clyde Butts, Robert Haynes and Raphick Jumadeen, presumably with advice from coach John Dyson and captain Gayle, turned to? Runako Morton, that's who, a player now nearing his 31st birthday whose modest international career is surely behind him. Additionally, and importantly, his litany of disciplinary problems, the latest as recently as last season, begs the question as to what message his recall sends about the standards expected of West Indian cricketers.

The selectors' illogic extends to the retention of David Bernard, the allrounder, and Narsingh Deonarine, the left-hand batsman and occasional offspinner, who were not used in a single international match in England. It was clearly to their advantage.

They have included one newcomer, Dwayne Bravo's half-brother, Darren, aged 20. Left-handed, with a wide range of strokes, from the same Santa Cruz area and related on his mother's side, he has already been dangerously dubbed "the new Brian Lara".

West Indies cricket could do with a batsman half as good at present. One threat to his development, as Simmons, Sammy and a host of others are aware, is selectors' inconsistencies.