BRIDGETOWN—Leg­endary for­mer West In­dies cap­tain Sir Vi­vian Richards has en­dorsed Kieron Pol­lard’s ap­point­ment as white-ball skip­per and be­lieves “pol­i­tics with the last regime” pre­vent­ed the Trinida­di­an from as­sum­ing the po­si­tion soon­er.

The 32-year-old Pol­lard was el­e­vat­ed to the po­si­tion last month and next week leaves the Caribbean with the Windies for his first chal­lenge, when they take on dan­ger­ous Afghanistan in In­dia from No­vem­ber 5-18 in three One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als and three Twen­ty20s.

“I’ve al­ways felt he should have been (ap­point­ed) a bit ear­li­er,” the 67-year-old Sir Vi­vian, who nev­er lost a Test se­ries as cap­tain, told the Line and Length crick­et pod­cast.

“I guess the pol­i­tics with the last regime and the things that ob­vi­ous­ly went down in In­dia, and some of these guys, in my opin­ion, were black­list­ed from play­ing the role that they should and help­ing to move the team for­ward, and I think be­cause of those po­lit­i­cal is­sues, it didn’t quite help the progress.”

Pol­lard re­placed all-rounder Ja­son Hold­er as one-day cap­tain and all-rounder Car­los Brath­waite at the helm of the T20 squad and was part of a ma­jor over­haul of the man­age­ment of the men’s side with fel­low Trinida­di­an Phil Sim­mons named as head coach for the sec­ond time in four years.

An ag­gres­sive low­er-or­der bats­man who has spe­cialised in the T20 for­mat, Pol­lard will bring plen­ty ex­pe­ri­ence to the role hav­ing led Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents for five years dur­ing the Caribbean Pre­mier League, and over­seen their cap­ture of the ti­tle in 2014. He al­so led St Lu­cia Stars last sea­son and this year took over as cap­tain of his na­tive Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers af­ter in­jury ruled all-rounder Dwayne Bra­vo out of the en­tire cam­paign.

Sir Viv said he had iden­ti­fied the lead­er­ship qual­i­ties in Pol­lard from as ear­ly as 2013 when he saw him in the in­au­gur­al CPL sea­son.

“When I first saw him in the first CPL tour­na­ment we had in the re­gion, he was, in my opin­ion, the best cap­tain, no dis­re­spect to Car­los and (peo­ple) like that,” Sir Viv said.

“Car­los is a very high­ly com­pet­i­tive in­di­vid­ual and would have won us a World Cup off his bat but he was put in that po­si­tion for po­lit­i­cal rea­sons and I think he would un­der­stand that as well be­cause I think he is very sen­si­ble and knowl­edge­able.

“So I have no is­sues with Kieron Pol­lard. I be­lieve he brings in­ven­tive­ness and is proac­tive more than any­thing else which I think can help at times.”

On­ly re­cent­ly, Pol­lard in­di­cat­ed he would not tol­er­ate in­su­lar­i­ty in se­lec­tion dur­ing his tenure and Sir Viv said he was in full agree­ment with the new cap­tain’s po­si­tion.

“I’ve al­ways been of the feel­ing that you try and pick the best team that you see re­gard­less of where the in­di­vid­u­als may come from, the best team that you see pos­si­ble that can rep­re­sent you,” Sir Viv stressed.

“That’s the way I’ve al­ways looked at it. The in­su­lar­i­ty fac­tor, in my opin­ion, was null and void.” (CMC)