West In­dies play­ers can now be se­lect­ed to play in any for­mat—Tests, Twen­ty20 (T20s) or One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als (ODI)—even if they do not play in the cor­re­spond­ing do­mes­tic for­mat.

Crick­et West In­dies Di­rec­tor of Crick­et, Miles Bas­combe, con­firmed this on Mon­day when asked via phone if play­ers can se­lect­ed for Tests with­out play­ing in the Re­gion­al First Class com­pe­ti­tion.

In the past, West In­dies play­ers were not se­lect­ed if they did not play in the do­mes­tic com­pe­ti­tions.

In 1995, open­er Desmond Haynes was not se­lect­ed for the West In­dies home se­ries against Aus­tralia, when a com­mit­ment with West­ern Province in South Africa’s Cas­tle Cup caused him to miss Bar­ba­dos’ first four-day match against Ja­maica, de­spite fin­ish­ing the Caribbean tour­na­ment with 470 runs at an av­er­age of 67.14 with a high score of 200.

Nine­teen years lat­er in 2014, off­spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine, who opt­ed to play in the In­di­an Pre­mier League fi­nal with Kolkata Knight Rid­ers, missed the dead­line to re­turn home for the prepara­to­ry train­ing camp for a Test se­ries against New Zealand and was not se­lect­ed.

Both Haynes and Nar­ine nev­er played a sin­gle Test af­ter.

Over the years, with the emer­gence of fran­chise crick­et, play­ers have utilised the op­por­tu­ni­ty to earn mil­lions of dol­lars from play­ing crick­et. This de­vel­op­ment has been se­vere on na­tion­al teams with West In­dies be­ing af­fect­ed in a neg­a­tive way.

Play­ers have ex­pressed in­ter­est to play in Tests but be­cause of the sched­ule of crick­et, it was not pos­si­ble for them to re­turn to the Caribbean to play First Class crick­et.

In or­der to meet the play­ers halfway, Bas­combe said, they “are aware of the packed crick­et sched­ules”.

The for­mer West In­dies crick­eter used the up­com­ing Eng­land and Bangladesh tours as ex­am­ples.

“We have Eng­land (tour to the Caribbean) run­ning in­to the (Re­gion­al) Su­per 50 and then over­lap­ping with the Bangladesh se­ries. It’s very pos­si­ble that play­ers who play in mul­ti­ple for­mats may not be able to par­tic­i­pate in Su­per 50,” said the Di­rec­tor of Crick­et, adding it would be un­fair to say that “they will not be able to rep­re­sent West In­dies”.

Bas­combe said the old pol­i­cy “could not stand up to the cur­rent in­ten­si­ty of crick­et sched­ules”.

This de­vel­op­ment means that play­ers like Shai Hope, Bran­don King, and Nicholas Pooran, once they de­clare them­selves avail­able, can be se­lect­ed by head coach An­dre Co­ley for the Test se­ries against Bangladesh.

How­ev­er, for­mer Tr&T crick­eter and crick­et an­a­lyst An­dre Lawrence is cau­tious about the move.

“De­vel­op­ing a team in­volves a whole lot more,” Lawrence said.

“Let’s take Pooran for ex­am­ple, what sort of red-ball crick­et has he played? How of­ten has he played? When last he played that sort of for­mat? Are they fit enough to play over a five-day Test?”

De­spite the green light for the play­ers to play red-ball crick­et, the for­mer open­er wants to see them play the four-day game.

“The first class game is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent dy­nam­ic to the short­est for­mat like a T10 or a T20. It in­volves dif­fer­ent a type of train­ing and a dif­fer­ent type of men­tal ap­proach,” said Lawrence.

Cen­tral Sports di­rec­tor Richard Ramkissoon says re­gion­al crick­et was set up for a rea­son.

“I be­lieve you have to make sure that you come through that sys­tem.”

Ramkissoon is look­ing at the big­ger pic­ture of de­vel­op­ment.

“When you look at the type of play­ers get­ting se­lect­ed to play with the re­gion­al team in com­par­i­son to Aus­tralia, Eng­land or even In­dia, these guys have been play­ing much less crick­et and scor­ing few­er runs or tak­ing few­er wick­ets than their in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts. That ex­po­sure is not there for our in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers.”

Hope cur­rent­ly boasts an av­er­age of 50.26 in One Day In­ter­na­tion­als, with a First Class av­er­age of 35,25 and a Test av­er­age of 25.01.

Pooran is next best in the ODI for­mat with a 39.66 av­er­age to go along with a First Class av­er­age of 31.9. They have both dis­played ex­cel­lent form in the last cou­ple of years along with King who av­er­ages 30.11 in ODI’s and First Class av­er­age of 35.04.

The ball now is in the hands of the play­ers if they want to say ‘I do’ to Test crick­et.