While the West Indies cricket team continues to work on their T20 World Cup preparation, Vincentian cricketers Obed Mccoy and Kesrick Williams are missing much of the fun. One from the recently started Pakistan tour, the other from the World Cup prep series altogether.
Cricket West Indies’ chief selector, Roger Harper, told Asberth News Network: “Obed McCoy, Edward’s & Allen are injured” – referring also to the 26 year-old Jamaican bowling allrounder Fabian Allen and the 39 year-old Barbadian fast bowler Fidel Edwards.
Harper’s only response when pressed for details as to the extent of the injuries and rate of recuperation between the three men was a succinct: “no, no I have no further details.”
He was, however, reported in a SportsMax article saying, “we took the decision to rest players who have picked up some niggles and give opportunities to other players in the squad.”
McCoy was awarded Player-of-the-Match for his 4 wickets for 26 runs contribution to the destruction of the Australian’s hopes earlier this month in the inaugural CG Insurance T20 International games held in Jamaica. The left-arm pacer along with Edwards and Shimron Hetmyer are the team’s travelling reserves.
As for Kesrick Williams – the right-arm, fast-medium bowler who hails from Spring Village; even though the selectors thought best to have him sit the entire series out, he claims to bear no ill will towards the CWI selection committee.
“My job is to perform and if you as a selector don’t think that I am performing enough; the most I can do is to go back to the drawing board and come again. I am not going to have any animosity between me or any coach or any captain – that’s not me.
“The most I can do is just go back to the drawing board and just come again. Even though a lot of people might think: ‘he don’t deserve it,’ ‘he don’t get enough chances’ or whatever. I remember the first time I got dropped from West Indies’ team I played a series against Bangladesh.
“In that series I got 4 for 28 in the first game, 1 for 32 and 1 for 27 and after that series I got dropped,” Williams told us.
He noted that his international ranking improved as a bowler because of those games. “I came from number 22 to 12 in the world,” he said. But still he was sent home even though he earned the “highest wicket taker” record in that same year.
He also reflected on the sporadic nature of his career to date saying: “I don’t have a lot of games to prove myself. If I don’t perform, I get dropped – which I understand.
“If it takes two games for me to get dropped, I fully understand and respect that because it makes me – it puts me under a lot of pressure – but it makes me a better player … I know I have to perform this game, so I just go out and do my best and try to perform.
Including the West Indies, the 39-year-old athlete has played for 10 teams since his 2011 first-class cricket debut.
When Williams returned to the pitch in 2019 it was in a 3-game match up against Afghanistan in India. He took 3 wickets in 4 overs for 2 of those games, 2 wickets in 4 overs for the third and conceded a total of 50 runs in that series.
His performance lost some sheen in the games he played against India where an additional 37 runs were scored off his efforts and the total wickets taken was halved compared to when he trounced the Middle Eastern cricketers even though he only bowled one ball less against the Indian team.
Williams was selected, again, in early 2020 but “failed” – according to him – to impress having added 38 runs in 3 overs to the Irish team’s scorecard. That failure made all the more pronounced since he did not take a single wicket.
The last time Williams donned the West Indies’ team colors, the New Zealanders took 32 runs from the 12 balls he was permitted to bowl.
“World Cup is around the corner and I would have loved to be in the World Cup squad but at the end of the day I can only control the things that are in my hands to control which is my fitness, performance and being able to go out there and do it on a continuous basis; not on and off.
“As athletes you’re gonna have the on and off times but, the onus is upon you to go out there and put in the performances that would make you great,” Williams said.
In the meantime, he takes some comfort in his track record – the fastest to reach 30 wickets in less games. Early in 2020 he was adjudged “number one in terms of the best pacers in T20 International cricket since the last T20 International Cricket World Cup.” Williams also presently holds the number one record as the only West Indies player to take the most wickets since the last T20 International World Cup.
“I played 17 games and I got like 30 wickets in 17 games. The only person who can break it now would be Obed Mccoy because he is already at 18 for the year and he still have a lot of cricket to play. So, he can break it and reach to 20.
“I was number one with the most in the year, ever, for a West Indies player – still is number one – but Obed has the chance to break it and I feel happy because he is a Vincentian and it shows that Vincentians are out there doing their thing, doing what they are supposed to do to make these teams and to stay on top of their game,” Williams said.
All is not lost for the Vincentian athlete if, as Chief Selector Harper intimated, “there is [the] possibility” that other athletes may be added to the eligible roster of players for the pending World Cup T20 series set to kick-off on Sunday October 17, 2021.
“The World Cup squad will be selected sometime in September. When we sit to select the squad, all available players will be considered,” Harper also told Asbert News Network.
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