With time running out on the West Indies selectors to name a captain for the Test tour of South Africa, the main stakeholders were locked in a teleconference last night.
T&T Guardian understands that chairman of selectors Sir Clive Lloyd flew into Antigua last evening, to join West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) CEO, Michael Muirhead and cricket operations chief Richard Pybus at the board’s headquarters. They would in turn link up with president of the WICB, Dave Cameron who is in Dubai.
The future of Denesh Ramdin as Test captain, Dwayne Bravo as limited overs captain and Darren Sammy as T20 captain has come under scrutiny after the trio aborted the tour of India recently.
T&T Guardian understands that the WICB is divided when it comes to the captaincy issue. Some of the directors want the captains to go, to send a message but president Cameron met with PM Ralph Gonzalves, PM Keith Mitchell, players Bravo and Ramdin at Hyatt and it was reported that the players would not be victimised for their actions in India.
If the WICB remove the captains, this would be against the Hyatt Accord and could cause new problems in West Indies cricket.
The T&T Cricket Board (TTCB) has removed Ramdin as captain of the Red Force but they explained that this was because of Ramdin’s involvement with the West Indies team.
The player has cried victimisation, but the TTCB is standing by its decision to appoint Rayad Emrit. They claim that this was the recommendation of the selectors before the India series. They explained that he was supposed to be in India and would have missed the opening of the series. He was then expected to fly out to South Africa for a Test, ODI and T20 series and would have returned at the end of January and fly out early February for the World Cup in Australia and the tournament would have been over by then. (VM)
