THE Guyana Cricket Board (GCB), has expressed its profound disappointment with what it deems ‘the totally illogical selection decisions’ of the current Cricket West Indies (CWI) selection committee.

In a release, the GCB said, “It is a well-known fact that the Guyana Jaguars has completely dominated the Regional 4-day Professional Cricket League for the past 4 consecutive years.
“This dominance did not occur by luck or chance but rather by a carefully designed development program by our Guyana franchise.

“Our Franchise has invested heavily in our youths and has created an Academy programme whereby the players practice daily with our contracted Franchise players.
“As a result of these successes, one would have thought that most of our players should have been featuring heavily in the entire CWI representative red ball teams. That is yet to happen.

“In the past month or so, CWI hosted Sri Lanka in a 3 Test series that unfortunately ended in a 1-1 draw at home.
“For the very first time in a long time, our team won the first Test of a series most convincingly.

“We strongly feel that had the correct team been selected to represent us in the Third Test of that series, we would have won that series easily by a 2 to nil margin. Keemo Paul was named as a replacement for Shimron Hetmyer and plucked out from a touring team in England to return here in the Caribbean to sit on the bench.

“The GCB held its collective breadth and refrained from making a statement in this regard with the hope that these mistakes would have been corrected at the commencement of this Bangladesh series.

“We were heartened when Shimron Hetmyer recovered from his recent illness and was able to participate in the tour match last week where he cracked a brilliant century against the tourists for the CWI President’s XI.

“Yet still, this was not enough to warrant his return to the starting XI in the current first Test of the Bangladesh series. Keemo Paul was made to sit out this match again.

We strongly feel that with these short two and three matches Test series now, our bench strength has to be tested regularly so that our supposedly ‘entrenched’ players are placed on notice that their places are not guaranteed throughout the series.

Our teams and its players will not develop if players continue to fail and are selected and players who perform well are not selected in the final XI. Our policy in this regard has to be clearly outlined and defined.

It is noteworthy that 4 CWI teams have been selected in the last month or so and some of our top performers in the PCL over the years could not find favour with the selectors.