CWI selectors sacked

The en­tire West In­dies se­lec­tion pan­el has been fired by the new ad­min­is­tra­tion and a three-man com­mit­tee will se­lect the re­gion­al team for the up­com­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) World Cup in Eng­land.

New­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) Ricky Sker­ritt will an­nounce at a press con­fer­ence this morn­ing in An­tigua, that there is a new coach tak­ing the team to the World Cup and al­so a new se­lec­tion pan­el will be pick­ing the said squad.

Bar­ba­di­an Floyd Reifer will re­place Richard Py­bus as coach of the re­gion­al team. Reifer comes in to re­place Py­bus be­fore the Eng­lish­man’s con­tract ends. He was con­tract­ed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion un­til the end of the In­di­an se­ries in the Caribbean in Au­gust.

Py­bus’ shift to the head coach po­si­tion in Jan­u­ary, filled the va­can­cy left by Stu­art Law mov­ing to coach Mid­dle­sex, cre­at­ing sig­nif­i­cant di­vi­sions in the Caribbean but the team had shown plen­ty of promise against Eng­land by win­ning the Test se­ries 2-1 and the Wis­den Tro­phy, and shar­ing the One Day In­ter­na­tion­al (ODI) se­ries, 2-2, to lift con­fi­dence ahead of the World Cup.

Py­bus orig­i­nal­ly took over as high-per­for­mance di­rec­tor in Feb­ru­ary last year hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly served as West In­dies’ di­rec­tor of crick­et from 2013 to 2016 when he chose not to re­new his con­tract.

The stint as di­rec­tor of crick­et was con­tro­ver­sial. He was re­spon­si­ble for the pol­i­cy that made par­tic­i­pa­tion in West In­dies’ do­mes­tic com­pe­ti­tions man­da­to­ry for in­ter­na­tion­al se­lec­tion across for­mats. This was in part re­spon­si­ble for a num­ber of se­nior play­ers choos­ing to fo­cus sole­ly on play­ing Twen­ty20 (T20) leagues around the world.

A cou­ple of days ago, Sker­ritt said: “That [Py­bus be­ing ap­point­ed as in­ter­im coach] has been a vex­a­tious sort of is­sue. I have to tell you that we be­lieve very strong­ly in lo­cal­is­ing the ex­per­tise that we put be­hind our teams and we be­lieve on­ly in bring­ing in non-Caribbean ex­per­tise on­ly where it is not avail­able across the re­gion. We want to be sure that the team does well at all times with the pos­si­ble re­sources but we al­so have to make sure that they have a Caribbean sup­port team around them.”

Reifer, who was the act­ing head coach of the team to Bangladesh last year, now takes over un­til the end of the World Cup. He will al­so be one of the men in the three-man pan­el to se­lect the team for the event. The oth­ers are Ja­maican Robert Haynes who will chair the se­lec­tion com­mit­tee, re­plac­ing Bar­ba­di­an Court­ney Browne. The oth­er se­lec­tor will be crick­et de­vel­op­ment di­rec­tor Jim­my Adams. The for­mer West In­dies bats­man has been in the role for a year now and will now serve as a se­lec­tor as well. The oth­er se­lec­tors out the door are Lock­hart Se­bastien, Travis Dowl­in and El­dine Bap­tiste.

Sker­ritt has promised to en­sure that the strongest pos­si­ble West In­dies team go to Eng­land to com­pete at the game’s show­piece. The West In­dies won the in­au­gur­al tour­na­ment in 1975 and fol­lowed up with the crown at the sec­ond edi­tion in 1979. Set a mea­gre 183 from 60 overs to win the third event in 1983 against In­dia, the re­gion­al side sur­pris­ing­ly lost by 43 runs.

Sker­ritt has called on the se­lec­tors to en­sure that every­one is giv­en a fair look in and they must be judged on their per­for­mance on the field of play and not off the field.(TNT Guardian)