Roberts questions West Indies selection criteria

ST JOHN'S, Antigua (CMC):

ANDY ROBERTS, the former West Indies paceman who has also served as a regional team selector, coach and manager, has queried the criteria for choosing teams and believes coach Bennett King has too much power as head coach.

Roberts, the outstanding fast bowler of the 1970s and early '80s, also reckons the West Indies are confusing themselves with the titles and roles of chairman and convenor of selectors.

"I do not know how we choose teams. I don't know what criteria we use. I don't know whether we just look for players who are currently playing or players who have played a couple months ago but for one reason or another, they are not actually involved in one form of cricket or another," Roberts said on the CMC CricketPlus programme during the first Test against India here.

TOO MUCH SAY

Asked to comment on whether he felt Australian King, who has been in the job for 19 months had too much say on selection matters, Roberts responded: "I think so."

"Being a former coach we never had a quarter or one tenth of the amount of power Bennett has. He negotiated that, so be it. But if he wants that and I know what I want for my cricketers, I am not going to go along with that.

"I think that the coach needs to have the power to drop a player but he mustn't have absolute power over the chairman of selectors."

Roberts said the West Indies were adopting an Australian method by now referring to Joey Carew as convenor of the selection panel instead of chairman and giving the title of chairman to King.

"I don't know who arrived at that. The system. To be honest I don't. A system may work well in Australia but not necessarily work in the West Indies," Roberts said.

"We have our own culture. We did not get to the top of world cricket by not knowing what we were doing. But it seems to me that our administrators believe that we do not know what we are doing.

"If I have a chairman (now convenor) of selectors, the chairman of selectors must be involved in picking one to 11, not 14, and he must be chairman.

"Otherwise why do we have him? What is he there for - just to convene meetings?"

Roberts also said he felt that Brian Lara, now in an unprecedented third stint as West Indies captain following appointments in 1998 and 2003, still did not have enough say in the selection of teams.

But he felt Lara was far more assertive than Shivnarine Chanderpaul, whom he replaced in late April after Chanderpaul resigned as captain.