WI World Cup selections under scrutiny

By Tony McWatt

The days that have passed since the September 14 announcement of the West Indies 2022 T20 World Cup squad have proved to be very interesting. Punctuated as they have been by selection chair Desmond Haynes’ provided explanations for some of the more contentious choices, as well as the overall reactions to the fifteen that have been chosen.

With the commencement of the West Indies’ 2022 World Cup campaign less than a month away, time will very soon emphatically reveal the exact wisdom, or lack thereof, of Haynes and his panel’s choices. Particularly those that have been hotly debated and viewed as highly contentious by West Indies cricket fans and followers.

In the interim, some performances in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) matches that have been played since the September 14 belated announcement of the squad’s composition have been supportive of Haynes and his panel’s choices. Others by contrast have not been nearly so.

Having not represented the West Indies in a T20I since April 2016, the 33-year-old St Lucian Johnson Charles is one of those whose World Cup squad inclusion has created some degree of fervent debate among Caribbean cricket fans, particularly on social media. Charles has, however, continued to justify his selection and defy his critics with his ongoing outstanding performances at this year’s CPL.

With 342 runs scored from 8 innings batted for an average of 48.85 and an impressive strike rate of 135.17, Charles has to date established himself as the tournament’s most outstanding batsman by far. So much so, that should he continue in his current vein until the end of this year’s CPL his seat on the flight to Australia could very well be as Evin Lewis preferred opening batting partner. As opposed to his initial designation as the squad’s backup wicket-keeper batsman.

Charles’ ongoing 2022 CPL performances have been fully supportive of his World Cup squad inclusions. Those of others by contrast may have already left Haynes and his fellow selectors scratching their individual and collective heads, while also providing them with sufficient reasons for second-guessing some if not all their controversial choices.

Having been controversially excluded from the squad, Fabian Allen, the dynamic three-dimensional left-arm spinner, power-hitting, world-class fielding all-rounder sent Haynes and Co, the very poignant message of a 35-ball half-century that included three sixes and an exact number of fours, followed by outstanding bowling returns of 1/20-4 in the Jamaica Tallawahs’ September 17 match against the Trinidad & Tobago Knight Riders.

Allen’s performance, coming as it did just a few days after the West Indies squad’s announcement, would have served to reinforce the significant numbers of expressed views that his inclusion would have made far more sense than that of Raymon Reifer. As a medium-pace batting allrounder, Reifer is very much the same type of player as Kyle Mayers, vice-captain Rovman Powell and even Jason Holder. As a left-arm seamer, his inclusion has also left the squad with no less than three such bowlers with the front liners Obed McCoy and Sheldon Cottrell being the other two. Had he been chosen instead of Reifer, Allen’s inclusion would have given the squad the much better balance of a second left-arm spinner, belligerent hard-hitting lower-order batsman, as well as a fielder whose outstanding catching and run-saving capabilities would be assets to any squad.

The recovering from injury, thirty-three years old ageing Cottrell is another whose inclusion Haynes and Co must now be second guessing. In the three matches he has so far played at this year’s CPL, Cottrell has yet to produce any performances that can in any way be deemed as supportive of the merits of his World Cup squad inclusion.

2/73-8 overs bowled at an economy rate of 9.12 are not the type of statistics that are squad inclusion supportive in any way shape or form. Furthermore, and by contrast, the continuing power-play wicket-taking performances of Jason Holder, Alzarri Joseph and Obed McCoy for their respective franchises have made a mockery of Haynes’ explanation for Cottrell’s inclusion, which was “he’s been taking wickets for us up front!”

The two major issues with Haynes’ advanced rationale are that firstly, Cottrell’s actual wicket-taking production for the West Indies has been somewhat unspectacular for the better part of the last two years! 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 0, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 2, 2, 1 and 1 are the numbers of wickets he’s taken in each of the last twenty T20I he’s played for the West Indies.

 

Secondly, Alzarri Joseph, Obed McCoy, Jason Holder, Akeal Hosein, as well as the equally controversially chosen Yannic Cariah, are most likely to be the West Indies World Cup front-line bowlers. With the likes of the all-rounders Kyle Mayers, Rovman Powell and Odean Smith providing backup support, it therefore then becomes difficult to envisage Cottrell doing anything other than bench-warming, towel-carrying duties. As many of those who were totally surprised by Cottrell’s inclusion have suggested, the much younger, fitter, better batsman options of either Romario Shepherd or even Kemo Paul would have made so much wiser choices than Cottrell’s now obviously surplus inclusion.

Even more bewildering than his advanced rationale for Cottrell’s s inclusion, was Haynes’ attempted defence of the inclusion of the yet T20I uncapped thirty-year-old Yannic Cariah as the squad’s leg-spinner. Haynes’ justification for Cariah’s inclusion was that he and his fellow selectors had been very impressed by what they had seen of him in the ODI fifty-over matches he’d played for initially the West Indies A team, as well most recently for the senior men’s against the visiting Kiwis.

In providing such an explanation, Haynes can be accused of making the rather dubious assertion that the requirements for success at the much longer 50 overs matches are identical to those of the much shorter, far more steroid-paced T20Is. As dubious a leap of reasoning as there has ever been made.

Last year at the very start of his tenure as selectors chair, Haynes took a gamble by including Kemar Roach in the West Indies squad for the ODI tour to India. In doing so he was counting on Roach’s capacity to transfer his outstanding Test cricket wicket-capturing productivity into identical ODI success. It proved to be both an unfounded theory and a colossal error of judgement.

Having seemingly not learnt the evident lesson from that failed experiment, that success in one longer format does not automatically transfer into that which is much shorter, Haynes et al now seem bent on not only repeating the error but compounding it even further by choosing the untried at T20Is Cariah over the far more experienced and seemingly improving Haydn Walsh. Aside from his vastly superior experience of having so far played as many as 38 T20Is for the West Indies being of likely some very useful value at as highest-level marquee a tournament as the World Cup, Walsh the preferred choice of many has continued to impress at this year’s CPL.

Seemingly becoming more consistent with every additional over he’s bowled, Walsh has so far produced returns of 3/66-9 overs bowled at an economy rate of 7.33. In contemporary T20 cricket is not that bad at all. Even more importantly, Walsh’s improving economy rate seems to suggest a contradiction of Haynes’ expressed criticism that his lack of consistency has not only been his biggest downfall but that it was also the primary factor governing his World Cup squad exclusion.

Haynes and his Panels’ expressed choice of Cariah, who couldn’t even merit a call-up from any of the CPL’s six participating franchises, over Walsh will, therefore, either prove itself to be a masterstroke of sheer genius or an error of unprecedented proportions. That is the very apt description one Caribbean cricket scribe has since applied to Haynes and his panel’s Cariah gamble.

The gamble having been taken, time will very soon surely tell of either its profound wisdom or abject stupidity.

About The Writer: Guyana-born, Toronto-based, Tony McWatt is the Publisher of both the WI Wickets and Wickets/monthly online cricket magazines that are respectively targeted toward Caribbean and Canadian readers. He is also the only son of the former Guyana and West Indies wicket-keeper batsman the late Clifford “Baby Boy” McWatt.