My two cents on West Indies team selection

THE EDITOR: When will WI ever learn that decades of poorly-picked regional cricket teams – picked not the basis of the talent but rather rampant favouritism, insularity, politics and politricks – is now cutting the barely beating heart out of Caribbean cricket?

Many teams in world cricket who were formerly minnows are not doing such madness in terms of their team selection. Instead, they are adhering to the best possible selection criteria, have world-class development systems in place and are producing teams that can beat the best in the world, as was seen at the recent T20 World Cup in Australia.

All of this is now taking place in the face of the WI cricket team failing to even qualify for the main draw of this tournament and finishing dead last in our group after a licking by Ireland. Yes, Ireland!

As things stand, it may be an uphill task for us to even qualify for next year's One Day World Cup, let alone actually win that tournament. This is how far the team in maroon has slipped in world cricket.

It has seemingly fallen on deaf ears at Cricket West Indies (CWI) that the definition of madness is to do the same thing over and over while expecting different results. If the status quo remains, Caribbean cricket may head the way of global irrelevance and our teams may be deemed "the also-rans."

Nobody except the oldies like myself will remember the long-gone glory days.

Here now is my take on what a sensibly-selected WI ODI team, to challenge for qualification to the ODI World Cup should like: Shai Hope, Chandrapaul Hemraj, Shimron Hetmyer, Shurfane Rutherford, Nicholas Pooran, Alick Athenaxe, Jason Holder, Romario Shepherd, Akeal Hosein, Ashmeed Nedd, Alzarri Joseph.

The WI's ODI A team could look like this: Evin Lewis, Leonardo Julien, Brandon King, Kavem Hodge, Shamar Springer, Kevin WIckam, Joshua Da Silva, Odean Smith, Joshua James, Nayeem Young and Gukadesh Mootie.

FITZROY OTHELLO

Princes Town