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In Kingston while the West Indies team has been busy these past few weeks delivering the rarity of a series triumph on the field, the air beyond the boundary has been bristling with the static of Caribbean cricketing politics.

Speculation has been rampant over who the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) will choose as the new panel of three selectors to serve for the next two years at its annual meetings at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel today and tomorrow.

It follows the acrimony that marked the WICB's last two annual meetings when Alloy Lequay unsuccessfully challenged Pat Rousseau for the presidency in 2000 and last year when Rousseau and vice-president Clarvis Joseph resigned following an effective vote of no-confidence.

The names nominated as selectors are already public knowledge, even if not released by the WICB.

In addition to two of the three incumbents, chairman Mike Findlay and Joey Carew, the others are Sir Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Andy Roberts, Joe Solomon and Maurice Foster.

All are former Test players from various eras and with varying records.

Joel Garner, who had been on the panel for the past two terms, was not nominated again as the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) put forward Greenidge instead.

The inside information, liberally quoted throughout the regional media, is that Sir Viv, 50, and Greenidge, 51, two of the greatest batsmen from the most recent golden era of West Indies cricket, are certainties. Both ended their long and illustrious Test careers in 1991.

The third man is less obvious although Carew, 64, the former Trinidad and Tobago captain who has been on and off the panel for the past 25 years, has been touted in some quarters to be the new chairman in the interest of continuity.

Roberts, 51, the pioneer of the four-pronged pace attacks and a contemporary of Richards and Greenidge, and Joe Solomon, the 71-year-old Guyanese who played the last of his 27 Tests in 1965, have already served on the panel.

Foster, 59, is regarded as an outsider. He had 14 Tests in the 1970s as a middle order batsman and occasional off-spinner and has been one of Jamaica's representatives on the WICB for the past four years.

The election of Richards and Greenidge would be in keeping with the pledge of the new WICB president, Reverend Wes Hall, himself a former Test star and selector, to bring back players who had drifted away from West Indies cricket during the previous administration under businessman Pat Rousseau.

Sir Viv did have a brief, unsuccessful stint as coach that ended in controversy and unpleasantness.

Brought in as replacement for the late Malcolm Marshall in the late stages of the 1999 World Cup, when Marshall was first hospitalised with the illness that took his life, and again on the subsequent tour of New Zealand, he was replaced by Roger Harper in February, 2000.

It was a decision that sparked angry protests Sir Viv's native Antigua.

Greenidge coached overseas, including two years with the Bangladesh national team, before returning to Barbados. He has worked as batting coach to the West Indies team at recent pre-tour camps.

A WICB media release lists the key items on the agenda for today's board of directors meeting as the election of directors for the coming year, the review of the annual report and the presentation of the financial report and a report on Windies Cricket TV by the marketing committee.

Chris Dehring, chief executive of the company formed to organise the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies, will report on on-going preparations.

The annual general meeting that follows tomorrow will discuss the financial statement, the auditors' report and the president's report for the year ending September 30 last.

© The Barbados Nation