The Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) on Thursday made known its “profound disappointment with the totally illogical selection decisions of the current Cricket West Indies Selection Committee.”
The GCB’s grouse is partly with the non-selection to the playing XI of Guyanese all-rounder Keemo Paul and batsman Shimron Hetmyer during the West Indies recently concluded Test series against Sri Lanka and the current first Test against Bangladesh.
Below is the full statement issued on Thursday.
“The Guyana Cricket Board wishes to express its profound disappointment with the totally illogical selection decisions of the current Cricket West Indies Selection Committee. It is a well-known fact that the Guyana Jaguars have completely dominated the Regional 4-day Professional Cricket League for the past four consecutive years. This dominance did not occur by luck or chance but rather by a carefully designed development programme by our Guyana franchise.
Our Franchise has invested heavily in our youths and has created an Academy programme whereby the Academy players practice daily with our contracted Franchise players. As a result of these successes, one would have thought that most of our players should have been featuring heavily in all of the CWI representative red ball teams. That is yet to happen.
In the past month or so, CWI hosted Sri Lanka in a three-Test series that unfortunately ended in a 1-1 draw at home. For the very first time in a long time, our team won the first Test of a series most convincingly. We strongly feel that had the correct team been selected to represent us in the third Test of that series, we would have won that series easily by a 2-0 margin.
Keemo Paul was named as a replacement for Shimron Hetmyer and plucked out from a touring team in England to return here in the Caribbean to sit on the bench. The GCB held its collective breath and refrained from making a statement in this regard with the hope that these mistakes would have been corrected at the commencement of this Bangladesh series.
We were heartened when Shimron Hetmyer recovered from his recent illness and was able to participate in the tour match last week where he cracked a brilliant century against the tourists for the CWI President’s XI. Yet still this was not enough to warrant his return to the starting XI in the first Test of this Bangladesh series. Keemo Paul was made to sit out this match again.
We strongly feel that with these short two and three matches Test series now, our bench strength has to be tested regularly so that our supposedly ‘entrenched’ players are placed on notice that their places are not guaranteed throughout the series. Our teams and their players will not develop if players continue to fail and are selected, and players who perform well are not selected in the final XI. Our policy in this regard has to be clearly outlined and defined.
It is noteworthy that four CWI teams have been selected in the last month or so and some of our top performers in the PCL over the years could not find favour with the selectors.”
