BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) – Former Test batter Carlisle Best has slammed the “production records” of West Indies batters and believes the Caribbean side’s results will continue to struggle as long as there is no change in performance levels from players.

The 62-year-old, who played eight Tests and 24 One-Day Internationals between 1986 and 1990, said players were only doing enough to be selected for the Test series and this was leading to continued downward spiral for West Indies across all formats.

“So invariably you’re not looking at a side that will win anything – that’s my view – because the production record of our players in terms of performances, is nothing to argue about,” said Best, who also sits on the Barbados Cricket Association’s selection panel.

“I’m happy … chief selector the Most Honourable Desmond Haynes was able to come up with a team but quite frankly in my view, (John) Campbell or (Devon) Thomas are about the same. There’s nothing to shout about.”

He added: “If we’re going to go forward positively, we have to focus almost primarily on performances and those performances have got to be result-oriented. It’s too long now we’re in the wilderness, with a good game here and there and you retain your play.

“There was a time I observed in West Indies cricket where we lost the series and then the last game or two, somebody scores a hundred. So he sets up himself for the next series which we’re going to lose, but he’s going to do well and he maintains a play.”

Campbell, a left-handed opener, was recalled to a West Indies 13-man squad named earlier this week to face England in the opening match of next month’s three-Test series, after hitting a splendid hundred against Barbados Pride in the first round of the Regional Four-Day Championship.

However, selectors ignored the form of Leeward Islands Hurricanes batter Devon Thomas who slammed a superb hundred and two half-centuries in three innings during the opening two rounds of the first-class campaign.

Best said because of a lack of consistent performances, selectors were forced repeatedly to resort to the same personnel.

“We see too often the regurgitation of players – players who have played before. It’s not like we’re rated number two or number three and we have a hard side to select,” Best contended, while speaking on Starcom Radio’s Mason and Guest cricket show here.

“The fact of the matter is that in Test cricket we’re number eight, in ODIs we’re at number (nine) and in T20 we’re at number (seven) and therefore there is not a lot to shout about as to who is selected. For me, it doesn’t matter.

“I want to see performances. Having been invited to sit as a selector by the BCA, I said from the beginning that my first criterion for selecting a player has to be performance and that then is followed by behaviour, attitude and ambition, but the number one criterion is performance.

“We see a whole list of names and we have seen these names before. John Campbell is back … mark you, he batted very, very well in the first innings of the Barbados game and again he wasn’t able to produce that in the second innings when (Jamaica needed) it most.”

There were no major surprises in the West Indies squad which will be led again by opener Kraigg Brathwaite, the only new face being 25-year-old Trinidadian fast bowler Anderson Phillip who played a single ODI against Sri Lanka last March.

Familiar faces like Roston Chase, Shai Hope, Shannon Gabriel, Rahkeem Cornwall and Jomel Warrican have all been dropped.