Cricket West Indies (CWI) President Dave Cameron has warned that “serious decisions” will be taken at the level of the board to deal with West Indies players’ commitment.
Speaking in a radio interview in Kingston in wake of the Windies historic series whitewash to Bangladesh in the recent two-Test series recently, Cameron said the board was spending “millions of dollars” to develop players but was not managing to maximize the investment.
He said the challenge is having players who are going in and out of the system and they are not fit enough and “we spend millions of dollars on bringing them to where they’re at and we need players to commit to West Indies.”
A CWI board meeting was held in Trinidad recently which Cameron said would have been used to come to “serious decisions” on what is referred to as the “West Indies cricket team first policy”.
The policy urges players to prioritize West Indies availability over global Twenty20 leagues, with the aim of ensuring the best squad at all times for international tours.
Cameron noted that at the moment, it appears the players seem to be distracted by the lure of the lucrative short format franchise cricket.
“Everybody wants to game to be over in three hours and we all want to get rich very, very quickly,” he noted.
For the ongoing three-match ODI series and T20s in Bangladesh, West Indies are again without players like Chris Gayle, Evin Lewis, Sunil Narine and Andre Russel.
In the past West Indies selectors have struggled with player unavailability due to contractual commitments to foreign franchises and were forced to do without several key players for their World Cup qualifying tournament last March.
