Vin­ode Mam­chan

The fact that wick­et­keep­er/bats­man De­nesh Ramdin re­signed from the West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (WIPA) may have cost him his job as cap­tain of the West In­dies Test team.

This ac­cord­ing to for­mer West In­dies man­ag­er Omar Khan who says that he un­der­stands that many of the se­nior play­ers have re­signed from the play­ers body af­ter they again ne­go­ti­at­ed a poor con­tract for them

Khan said: "It is al­leged that a num­ber of se­nior West In­dies play­ers have re­signed from the Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (WIPA) with Ramdin be­ing one of them, and it seems as if this has cost him the cap­tain­cy."

Ramdin was re­placed by ODI cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er last week as cap­tain of the Test team for the up­com­ing tour of Sri Lan­ka. The West In­dies play two Test match­es, three ODIs and two T20s on this tour and Hold­er will take charge of both the Tests and the ODIs, while a T20 cap­tain is yet to be con­firmed. Whether the West In­dies se­lec­tors con­tin­ue with St Lu­cian Dar­ren Sam­my or choose an­oth­er can­di­date is yet to be seen. Open­er Kraigg Brath­waite will serve as deputy to Hold­er for the Test se­ries.

Khan con­tin­ued: "The re­la­tion­ship be­tween the WICB and the WIPA is known to be very close and it may have been the think­ing of the board that they need­ed their Test cap­tain to be a mem­ber of the play­ers body. I hope that this is not the case be­cause if it is, then it is a very sad state of af­fairs."

Ramdin was one of the play­ers who abort­ed the West In­dies tour of In­dia last Oc­to­ber over a pay­ment struc­ture dis­pute be­tween WIPA and the WICB.

"I can­not un­der­stand how they could have re­moved Ramdin from the post of cap­tain. He skip­pered in 14 Test match­es, won four, lost sev­en and drew three. This record was not bad giv­en the fact that he was re­build­ing a team," added Khan.

"All the oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al teams have giv­en their cap­tains time to build their squad and it is un­for­tu­nate that Ramdin's tenure has been cut short. The WICB has failed in terms of prepar­ing their lead­ers. When you look at the oth­er coun­tries, they send their cap­tain and those who they think could be­come lead­ers to sem­i­nars to de­vel­op them. This is not done at the WICB, they just ig­nore this and once they con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in this man­ner our crick­et will con­tin­ue to be in the dol­drums."

Khan said he was to­tal­ly puz­zled at the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion and would like those in­volved to come clean. "The WICB sends out a press re­lease stat­ing that the di­rec­tors of the board unan­i­mous­ly agreed to re­move Ramdin based on a rec­om­men­da­tion from the se­lec­tors. Yet one of the di­rec­tors Az­im Bas­sarath comes out and says that he knew noth­ing of this and is not sup­port­ing the move. At the mo­ment peo­ple are try­ing to fool the peo­ple of the Caribbean and it is about time some­one speaks the truth."