The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) yes­ter­day said poor at­ti­tude to­wards fit­ness was re­spon­si­ble for its de­ci­sion to refuse re­tain­er con­tracts to Ramnaresh Sar­wan, Jerome Tay­lor and Nars­ingh De­onar­ine.

These three, along with De­nesh Ramdin and Travis Dowl­in, were cut from the con­tract list is­sued by the WICB last week. In a strong­ly word­ed press re­lease, the WICB stat­ed the team man­age­ment and se­lec­tion com­mit­tee were con­cerned about Sar­wan's ex­treme­ly in­dif­fer­ent at­ti­tude and spo­radic ap­proach to­wards fit­ness, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­cent years. The re­lease fur­ther stat­ed the se­lec­tion com­mit­tee, fol­low­ing con­sul­ta­tions with spe­cial­ists in the team man­age­ment, felt that Sar­wan's un­sat­is­fac­to­ry fit­ness lev­els were di­rect­ly con­tribut­ing to mul­ti­ple in­juries which were caus­ing him to be un­avail­able for se­lec­tion to the West In­dies team.

Sar­wan played just two Test match­es and 13 one day in­ter­na­tion­als in the past year be­cause of fit­ness prob­lems. The WICB al­so re­vealed that fol­low­ing the tour of Aus­tralia of 2009, Sar­wan was one of three play­ers who it wrote re­gard­ing their con­sis­tent­ly low lev­els of fit­ness. "In Ramnaresh's case, he then spends a sig­nif­i­cant pe­ri­od of the tour try­ing to rec­ti­fy his un­ac­cept­able fit­ness lev­els. Re­ports from the team man­age­ment are that while one of the three play­ers writ­ten to, im­proved his fit­ness con­sid­er­ably the fit­ness lev­els of the oth­er two–Sar­wan and Nars­ingh De­onar­ine–re­main be­low par de­spite the of­fi­cial no­tice."

In Tay­lor's case the WICB said his lack of com­mit­ment to his own re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion fol­low­ing in­juries sus­tained in Aus­tralia in 2009 and in the ICC World Twen­ty20 2010, worked against him.

"Jerome, de­spite be­ing un­der re­tain­er con­tract, has not shown the ex­pect­ed at­ten­dance and com­mit­ment to pur­sue the re­quired as­sess­ment and con­se­quent re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive pro­grammes that would be re­quired." The WICB stat­ed it had ex­plained to Tay­lor that his phys­i­cal make up re­quired a spe­cif­ic pro­gramme of fit­ness and ex­er­cise to en­sure his avail­abil­i­ty to play at the high­est lev­el and avoid fre­quent break­downs. "There has not been a demon­strat­ed com­mit­ment to achieve that lev­el of fit­ness and en­sure that he can per­form con­sis­tent­ly at the high­est lev­el." De­spite be­ing in­formed of his poor fit­ness lev­el, De­onar­ine has not im­proved and the board saw it un­wise to of­fer him a re­tain­er.

"De­onar­ine's lev­el of fit­ness is re­gret­tably, un­ac­cept­able for an in­ter­na­tion­al crick­eter. His re­sults are be­low par in the ma­jor­i­ty of fit­ness tests con­duct­ed by the team man­age­ment spe­cial­ists. Nars­ingh, de­spite nu­mer­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties, con­tin­ues to show gross dis­re­gard for his fit­ness. Team man­age­ment has plead­ed with, be­seeched and ca­joled Nars­ingh to im­prove his over­all fit­ness but to no avail."

The WICB re­lease con­tin­ued: "The se­lec­tion com­mit­tee does not be­lieve the WICB should award cen­tral re­tain­er or de­vel­op­men­tal con­tracts to play­ers who show non-com­pli­ance and de­fi­ance on mat­ters as fun­da­men­tal as play­er fit­ness and phys­i­cal prepa­ra­tion."

The WICB em­pha­sised that in the on­go­ing de­vel­op­ment of a new team ethos–with re­gard to achiev­ing out­lined goals–a com­mit­ment to achiev­ing and main­tain­ing a high lev­el of phys­i­cal and med­ical fit­ness among oth­er cri­te­ria will be close­ly su­per­vised and rigid­ly en­forced.