Dear Editor,
My former teachers can attest that I always had good handwriting and took copious notes, and this attribute has served me well over the years, even up to this day.
So, when Darren Sammy made that eye-raising comment on the possibility of selecting Shamar Joseph into the West Indies T20 World Cup team, having already selected Johnson Charles who had failed miserably in the previous eleven matches, I immediately recalled the St Lucian West Indies Cricket administration duo of Hunte and Hilarie, who ushered in the era of the most blatant and disgraceful demonstration of insularity ever. It was no coincidence, and it is instructive to note that Sammy, an ordinary cricketer all his life, was the main benefactor.
It is my opinion that except for Charles and Chase, this was the best West Indies team selected since the Roger Harper team that was sent to Bangladesh. While I could have seen the reason for Chase being selected, there was no justifiable reason for Charles’s selection, except that he was St. Lucian.
I will be the first to admit that I was wrong about Chase. Let me hasten to add that in all my life listening to, and watching cricket, I have never seen or heard of pitches as ridiculous as what has been prepared for this World Cup. Bridgetown and Gros Islet were okay, but all the others were disgraceful, to say the least.
West Indies selectors, including Sammy, having selected the team, clearly suggested by its composition that players were selected to perform specific roles; and the obvious presumption was that West Indies would start quickly (which is why Charles was selected), consolidate in the middle (where Chase would come in if quick wickets were lost), and accelerate at the end; which is why Russell, Shepherd and Hosein were sure picks, apart from their roles in the bowling department.
From the first few games, it was clear that these pitches were not the common type, and would require a different approach, which would ultimately determine the makeup of the playing eleven. The matches in Guyana and Trinidad provided ample evidence of the need to change the strategy, but Sammy remained resolute in his flawed conviction that his method was the answer, despite other teams making the required adjustments. It was clear that he had no back-up plan, and, as a consequence, would rather live in hope and die in despair. And die he did, and so did the West Indies’ hope of winning the T20 World Cup.
Shimron Hetmyer having been selected, it was expected that he would have been told of his role and given a chance to execute. I can understand Rutherford’s performance justified his selection, but Charles’s performance was not what was planned; he was scoring runs at just about a-run-a-ball to stay in the team, and by the time he got out in the 10th or 11th over, it was difficult to execute the flawed plan, and the big-hitting batsmen just could not deliver.
Charles should have been dropped since then, and a backup plan should have been implemented to deal with the conditions and realities. Instead, Sammy persisted with his countryman, and dropped him only in the must-win game.
It is clear that Sammy had no intention of playing Hetmyer. Once Hetmyer was selected, he should have been given his role, and allowed to perform it. Had he failed, it would have been justifiable to drop him. Instead, he was fetching water, and suffered the ultimate disrespect when Myers was brought in to the team and played immediately.
Is Myers a better batsman than Hetmyer? and was Myers’s innings different from what Charles had been playing?
And people question Hetmyer’s actions when it comes to West Indies Cricket? I say he is in perfect order to act the way he does, and I hope Shamar Joseph has taken copious notes.
Once Shepherd was dropped, it lengthened the tail, and it was asinine to believe that tail-enders could deal with difficult pitches which top-order batters could not deal with. Hetmyer is one of the better players of spin bowling in the West Indies team, and should have been selected to perform the role he is accustomed to playing for his IPL franchise team. And I dare say that no team playing in this World Cup would have had a Hetmyer in their team and not play him.
After the first two matches, I called on social media for Charles to be dropped, for Pooran to be promoted to open the batting (he can deal with the spin that was slowing down the scoring rate), and for Hetmyer to be brought in to bat before Russell and perform the role of finishing the innings, because I saw clearly that the big-hitting was not going to work. Brian Lara expressed the same sentiments a few games after.
The innings Rutherford played against New Zealand was the role I saw Hetmyer playing. But, of course, that was assuming that Sammy had the intellectual capacity to recognize that his plan was not going to work, and the intelligence to make the changes that were needed.
West Indies had this T20 World Cup to win. They had a good team, which was of concern to all the other teams, none excepted; but the obstinate Sammy, who stuck with his plan despite clear indications that it was not working – and his insularity and vindictiveness – dictate that he must take full responsibility for West Indies’ elimination.
I am not saying the West Indies lost because they did not play Hetmyer. I am saying that they lost because Sammy did not recognize that his plan was ineffective; and he had no backup plan which required a change of strategy and, consequently, changes of a few personnel.
And please don’t tell me about West Indies moving up the world rankings. That was not the objective; the objective was to win the T20 World Cup, and West Indies failed, and they failed because of the obstinate Sammy.
Yours truly,
Eric Whaul
