Vin­ode Mam­chan

Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Anil Roberts has writ­ten the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) ask­ing them to find out from the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) why De­nesh Ramdin was not among the play­ers of­fered re­tain­er con­tracts re­cent­ly. Ramdin, as well as Ramnaresh Sar­wan, Jerome Tay­lor and Nars­ingh De­onar­ine were snubbed by the WICB who ex­plained that fit­ness is­sues sur­round­ed Tay­lor, Sar­wan and De­onar­ine. How­ev­er, no ex­pla­na­tion was giv­en for Ramdin's ab­sence. Roberts con­firmed yes­ter­day he wrote the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) five days ago. The Min­is­ter said he al­so en­quired as to why Lendl Sim­mons was dropped from the team. "We are play­ing with peo­ple's ca­reers here and I am say­ing that every week that goes by this thing is get­ting more and more baf­fling. We need some an­swers and I have gone through the right chan­nels to get an an­swer, to see what we can do to as­sist the boys."

"Be­ing a coach, I can tell you that this ac­tion can on­ly lead to de­stroy­ing a play­er's con­fi­dence. I read where they said that they are hop­ing the play­ers get mo­ti­va­tion from this and fight to get back on re­tain­er. This is ab­solute stu­pid­ness. How can you take away con­fi­dence and hope to in­spire mo­ti­va­tion." Roberts, a top swim coach who guid­ed George Bovell to an Olympic medal, wants to know if mech­a­nisms were put in place to as­sist the play­ers. "Ob­vi­ous­ly Ramdin's prob­lem is his bat­ting be­cause he is the best glove­man in the Caribbean. If this is his prob­lem, what did the WICB do in terms of ex­tra coach­ing to have him rec­ti­fy his prob­lems? They wait un­til the man reach­es a cer­tain point and then dis­card him from their re­tain­er list.

"Al­so, I would like to know who they are com­par­ing in the re­gion to Ramdin right now. Are they go­ing to com­pare those re­gion­al first class wick­et­keep­ers to Ramdin, when he has been bat­tling with the likes of Brett Lee and Mut­ti­ah Mu­ralitha­ran on the world scene."

Roberts then turned his at­ten­tion to Sim­mons. "We have been hear­ing and read­ing that Sim­mons is out be­cause of in­dis­ci­pline, yet they have not giv­en the oc­ca­sions when he breached the rules. This is mad­ness and the WICB must re­alise that they have to op­er­ate in a pro­fes­sion­al man­ner to take the sport for­ward in the Caribbean."