BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Ex-West In­dies bat­ting coach To­by Rad­ford has again crit­i­cised the lack of con­sis­ten­cy in fit­ness stan­dards for se­lec­tion to West In­dies squads and be­lieves a more eq­ui­table process is re­quired for the best play­ers to emerge.

The Welsh­man, who left the West In­dies set­up in 2019 as part of an over­all coach­ing over­haul of the men’s se­nior side, said it too of­ten ap­peared as if fit­ness waivers were be­ing used con­ve­nient­ly to en­sure the se­lec­tion and non-se­lec­tion of play­ers.

“I don’t think there’s a con­sis­ten­cy with the fit­ness test­ing and the way it is be­ing used,” said Rad­ford.

“It seems to me if they want to pick a play­er, they give a waiv­er to a cer­tain play­er. If they don’t want to pick a play­er, they sud­den­ly give the ex­cuse that the guy is not fit and there’s no proof of when the test was done or how it was done.

“And I hear lots of dif­fer­ent sto­ries. I don’t think it’s con­sis­tent … if they want to get a play­er in, sud­den­ly they waive the fit­ness test. If they don’t want a play­er in, they blame the fit­ness test and use that as an ex­cuse.

“I don’t think it is a hard and fast method for se­lect­ing and non-se­lect­ing and we saw that re­cent­ly with the World Cup. There were peo­ple on there (squad) I’m sure they didn’t pass a fit­ness test and I think we all know that.

“But then they were oth­er peo­ple at oth­er times who were not picked and they said they failed the fit­ness test. It doesn’t look con­sis­tent to me.”

Over the last two years, CWI has drilled down on fit­ness stan­dards, lead­ing to sev­er­al play­ers miss­ing out on se­lec­tion for in­ter­na­tion­al tours.

And play­er fit­ness proved a source of heat­ed de­bate ahead of the re­cent Twen­ty20 World Cup in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates when ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers were hand­ed fit­ness waivers while the likes of rook­ies Sher­fane Ruther­ford and Odean Smith failed to meet the stan­dards and were ruled out of se­lec­tion.

Rad­ford said trans­par­ent fit­ness stan­dards would ul­ti­mate­ly elim­i­nate the in­con­sis­ten­cy which cur­rent­ly char­ac­terised se­lec­tion.

“I would like to see a re­al­ly above board, ro­bust se­lec­tion process. And if you’re go­ing to use fit­ness which is a mas­sive part of the game, you’ve got to be con­sis­tent with it,” he ar­gued.

“Every­body has got to be treat­ed the same way, test­ed the same way and what­ev­er the re­sults are, the de­ci­sion that’s made for ‘A’ has to be the de­ci­sion made for ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘E’, ‘F’ and ‘G’ as well.

“At the mo­ment, it’s be­ing used how­ev­er they want to se­lect.”

He added: “For test­ing to be fair, every­body should be in the same place on the same day do­ing the same test, and you can all see them do­ing it.

“When you start do­ing it at dif­fer­ent times, and this per­son had a waiv­er and that per­son’s got a waiv­er, it gets messy and then it’s open to peo­ple look­ing at it (process) and say­ing ‘what went on here?’. And even if it was fair, it doesn’t look fair.”

(CMC)