BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Sir Andy Roberts has ques­tioned the ef­fec­tive­ness of di­rec­tor of crick­et, Jim­my Adams, claim­ing the for­mer West In­dies cap­tain ap­peared to be on a “joyride” rather than ac­tive­ly over­see­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the in­ter­na­tion­al squad.

The 71-year-old fast bowl­ing leg­end said Adams, ap­point­ed to the role in 2017, rarely spoke to the is­sues of crick­et de­vel­op­ment in the re­gion and seemed not to be fo­cussing on this key area.

“Do you think that the crick­et board has been watch­ing the per­for­mance of the Di­rec­tor of Crick­et over the years? So how have they not made that change for all this time,” Sir Andy said.

“I hard­ly hear the Di­rec­tor of Crick­et say any­thing con­cern­ing the de­vel­op­ment of crick­et. I think Jim­my has been on a joyride for a long time be­cause he hasn’t come out and said [any­thing] per­tain­ing to which di­rec­tion the crick­et is go­ing.”

Adams’s per­for­mance has come un­der the spot­light in the wake of West In­dies’ shock ex­it from the Twen­ty20 World Cup in Aus­tralia, where the Nicholas Pooran-led unit failed to get out of the qual­i­fy­ing stage.

The de­ba­cle trig­gered the res­ig­na­tion of head coach Phil Sim­mons and al­so led to wide­spread spec­u­la­tion over the top posts in Crick­et West In­dies.

Adams, 54, re­placed con­tro­ver­sial Eng­lish­man Richard Py­bus in Jan­u­ary 2017, af­ter spend­ing five years as head coach of Eng­lish coun­ty Kent.

Sir Andy ar­gued Adams was guilty of spend­ing too much time fo­cussing on the fit­ness as­pect of play­ers and not their skills de­vel­op­ment.

“Most of what I hear the di­rec­tor talk­ing about is the fit­ness of the play­ers and I think that shouldn’t be his port­fo­lio,” the An­tiguan told Star­com Ra­dio’s Ma­son and Guest crick­et show.

“His port­fo­lio is to en­hance the skills of the play­ers – that’s what he should be fo­cussed on, in­stead of pri­mar­i­ly the fit­ness of play­ers.

“He should be more in­to the de­vel­op­ment of the skills set of these play­ers be­cause when you look at it, Ire­land are more skill­ful than us, Zim­bab­we are more skill­ful than us and it shows.”

And Sir Andy said con­cern­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the West In­dies’ skills set, there was need for a change of fo­cus from the tra­di­tion­al pow­er-hit­ting.

“All this time peo­ple talk­ing about pow­er-hit­ting … crick­et is not based on pow­er-hit­ting whether it’s Test match, ODI, T20,” he stressed. “The skills are what is go­ing to car­ry you through.”

West In­dies en­tered the tour­na­ment in Aus­tralia as two-time for­mer cham­pi­ons, hav­ing won ti­tles in 2012 and 2016, both un­der all-rounder Daren Sam­my.

How­ev­er, they were swept 2-0 by hosts Aus­tralia in a pre-tour­na­ment se­ries be­fore suf­fer­ing de­feats to min­nows Scot­land and Ire­land to bow out of con­tention in the eight-team qual­i­fiers. (CM)