By Neto Baptiste
The time has come for a serious overhaul and examination of the current crop of players currently representing the senior regional men’s team.
This is the view of former West Indies fast bowler, Sir Curtly Ambrose, who said the team’s recent dismal tour of England has highlighted the flaws in some players and that tough decisions must be made.
“We can’t keep playing some of these players who keep failing and don’t even look like they are going to score any runs or whatever the case might be. The opening positions, right now, [Kraigg] Brathwaite and [John] Campbell are totally out of sorts and I say that quite straight up so we need to look at maybe two new opening batsmen and start fresh next series,” he said.
“Shai Hope, I’ve mentioned before that he is woefully out of form, something is wrong with him, he has no confidence and he’s struggling and I was saying that maybe the third Test match they would have left him out and just let him get away from cricket for a while,” he added.
West Indies sunk to a 2-1 series loss to England after convincingly winning the opening Test by four wickets.
The Caribbean men however went under in consecutive Tests, losing by 113 runs in the second and 269 runs in the third.
Sir Curtly was particularly disappointed with the performances of wicketkeeper batsman, Shane Dowrich.
“Keeper [Shane] Dowrich has to be left out as well too because he looks totally out of sorts as well. I would play the guy [Joshua] Da Silva as a wicketkeeper batsman. I saw him in the Super50 recently and he looks a good prospect and he deserves a chance. He scored a hundred in a warm-up game before the series too so I think he deserves a chance,” the iconic fast bowler said.
The pacer, who claimed 405 wickets in 98 Tests, is however impressed with the current bowling unit.
“You’ve got [Kemar] Roach, [Shannon] Gabriel, the captain [Jason Holder] himself, Alzarri Joseph as the quickies and then you have young Chemar Holder who I think is a fine prospect, and if given the chance, he could do well, so I still think the bowling is not too bad,” he said.
“It is not easy playing three Test matches in a row, so after the first Test, you could see Gabriel in the second Test, struggling badly. He bowled some good spells in between, but you could see he looked tired, very sluggish and all that stuff in the second Test; but I can’t fault the bowlers too much,” Sir Curtly added.
West Indies surrendered the Wisden Trophy following the series loss.