Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts has again ap­pealed to the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) for the in­clu­sion of mys­tery spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine in the West In­dies team for the Sec­ond Test against New Zealand which starts on Mon­day.

The West In­dies suf­fered a mas­sive loss by 186 runs in the First Test which end­ed in four days in Ja­maica on Wednes­day.

Point­ing to an ex­clu­sive re­port in the Trinidad Guardian which sug­gest­ed that the Board was re­con­sid­er­ing its de­ci­sion not to play Nar­ine in any of the Test match­es, and was ne­go­ti­at­ing for him to re­turn for the Third Test which will be played in Bar­ba­dos, Roberts said he was pleased at the de­vel­op­ment.

In a let­ter to WICB pres­i­dent Dave Cameron on Wednes­day, Roberts said he was pleased to learn of un­con­firmed re­ports that the WICB was in dis­cus­sions with Nar­ine's man­age­ment team which may lead him to play­ing against New Zealand in the third Test.

"This in­deed is en­cour­ag­ing news and I com­mend you and your Board for the ma­tu­ri­ty shown in ac­ced­ing to these ne­go­ti­a­tions," Roberts' let­ter said.

"If at all pos­si­ble, con­sid­er­a­tions should be made for Nar­ine's in­clu­sion in the team for the sec­ond and the third Test match­es."

Roberts said he was look­ing for­ward to the play­er join­ing the team as it will au­gur well for the play­er, team and fans.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Roberts said the fact that the sec­ond test was be­ing played in Trinidad was a good rea­son for the Board to re­con­sid­er its de­ci­sion.

He said: "The re­al­i­ty is that we lost the first Test. If they are ne­go­ti­at­ing with Sunil's man­age­ment, I don't see why they are fo­cus­ing on the third Test on­ly.

"Nar­ine's pres­ence in the team in Trinidad will not on­ly make a dif­fer­ence to the mar­ket­ing of the game since Tri­nis will want to see him in ac­tion, but it can al­so go a long way in how the team per­forms in the next two match­es.

"It makes no sense say­ing let's play him in the third in Bar­ba­dos and not play him in the sec­ond where he will be at home in Trinidad."

Nar­ine has been at the cen­tre of at­ten­tion af­ter the Board ex­er­cised its right to omit him from the Test team af­ter he opt­ed to rep­re­sent his team in the IPL fi­nal rather than at­tend a prepa­ra­tion camp for the Test match­es.

Nar­ine's team Kolkata Knight Rid­ers won the tour­na­ment with Nar­ine play­ing a key role in the fi­nal.

The de­ci­sion to omit Nar­ine trig­gered a se­ries of let­ters from the Min­is­ter, who main­tains that his in­ter­est is West In­dies crick­et, and hav­ing the best pos­si­ble play­ers on the field.

"We need to have our best play­ers rep­re­sent us, that's the bot­tom line, and no one can tell me for cer­tain that Nar­ine's omis­sion makes sense."

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