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There is a West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) bylaw which states that only persons who have played cricket at the highest level are eligible for election on its selection panel.

This simply means that the likes of the revered commentator Tony Cozier cannot be a West Indies team selector.

This means Ricky Skerritt does not qualify to be a selector; this means Dr Rudi Webster cannot be a selector of the West Indies team. How absurd!

I would hazard a guess that no more than 300 people have played Test cricket for the West Indies and by now many of them are no longer playing in this world.

This means that in effect we have deliberately and unwittingly limited our pool of prospective selectors. What short-sightedness!

Would it not have been better to state that at least one or even two of the panels must have played Tests? Such a decision would permit the board to select from a wider pool.

As it stands it is limited to a handful. No wonder our selectors have blundered so consistently.

They are quick to blame lack of talent for poor performances, whereas in most cases it is simply poor judgement on their part.

Just imagine that Cameron Cuffy at 32 is our opening bowler.

To this date he has only played 15 Tests for 43 wickets at 33.83 a piece and a strike rate of 78.2; that is, on average he claims a wicket every 78 balls.

Compare this with Reon King whose strike rate is 56. Colin Stuart has the most impressive rate of 32 after five Tests. King is 27, and Stuart is 29.

Surely it should be clear to our selectors that the average athlete today at 32 years of age only has experience to depend on for success.

What experience can one claim after 15 Test matches? Which is the grand total of what Cuffy has played. Ours is a struggling team in the rebuilding process therefore there is no advantage in playing Cuffy over a young fast bowler. This is an error in judgement.

The tour selectors in India erred when they chose to play a specialist spinner in the first and second Tests, as the chairman of selectors unwittingly admitted to in an interview.

He explained that they reverted to four fast bowlers which formula has worked for the West Indies. They should have begun and not ended the series with that attack.

The evidence shows that our last spinner of note was Lance Gibbs whose final match was in the 1970s.

The craft of spin bowling is extremely more difficult to master than fast bowling. The margin for error is simply too small for a slow bowler.

I have always believed that nobody fights for second place but again the selectors do not agree. While Ambrose and Walsh were around, we never attempted to develop our rookies into new ball users.

The result is they had to learn on their own when the two masters left.

The old maestros were usually entrusted with the new balls in the most conductive situations and the rookies were expected to use the softer and less shiny ball, when the wicket is less bowler friendly and the batsmen set.

Such irony. Wouldn't the experienced bowler be better able to use the ball?

Another error to my mind is not retaining Darren Powell and Jermaine Lawson for the current One-Day series.

Just imagine Australia not using Brett Lee or Pakistan Shoaib Akhtar in a series. Those two youngsters are our best prospects in fast bowlers. How else are they to gain experience at that level.

For the record, at the time of writing Vasbert Drakes at 33 years old had played ten One-Day Internationals and averaged 12.5 with the bat.

With the ball he had bowled 81 overs, taken nine wickets at an average of 47.8 runs per wicket. His economy rate was 5.26 – what qualifies him over anybody else.

Many, myself included, have sharply criticised our players, but the truth is there is steady but slow improvement; and slow it will continue to be.

For starters, we sent a relatively young batting team to India where the hosts are impregnable, with only one practice match to get acclimatised to the conditions.

It is true that the ICC regulations only require the host to arrange one such match, but the WICB has a moral obligation to the players and supporters alike to prepare the team in the best manner possible and this includes a few more practice matches.

England on this current tour of Australia were treated to at least three preparatory games. Not so for West Indies in India.

Unless the board learns from the experiences of others and change course, the recovery of West Indies cricket will be slow and painful.

Let us not forget our current team captain is 35 and his deputy is 34. Where does that leave us in three or four years? Back to square one.

It might be a bitter pill to swallow for the board members to accept that they too are responsible for the present state of West Indies cricket but they need to wake up.

l This article was submitted as a letter to the Editor.

© The Barbados Nation