There are a couple of West Indian cricketers in Port-of-Spain this morning, at the preliminary training camp for the upcoming Indian series, who must have wondered whether they would ever be in such company again

Tony Cozier23-Mar-2002There are a couple of West Indian cricketers in Port-of-Spain this morning, at the preliminary training camp for the upcoming Indian series, who must have wondered whether they would ever be in such company again.There are others scattered across the Caribbean who are putting their own interpretations on their absence from the guest list.For Stuart Williams, 32, and Junior Murray, 34, it is a recall three years after they last played for the West Indies and at an age when the thoughts of international sportsmen turn to a final farewell from the action and pressures of competition, to coaching posts and to commentary boxes.But what of Leon Garrick, Kerry Jeremy, Reon King, Jermaine Lawson and Corey Collymore, all young men in their mid or early 20s who have already had the recent taste of international cricket? What message should they read in their removal from the roll call?The case for Williams and Murray would seem to be based on the weight of performance over the last two regional seasons.Williams averaged 53 in the Busta Cup last year and rounded off this year’s campaign with his unbeaten 252 against Guyana in the semi-final, a record 974 runs and an average of 97.4.Murray, the linchpin of the weak Windwards batting for the past decade, reeled off four hundreds, another tournament record, and averaged 53.5 to supplement his 26 catches and a stumping.Those are figures no selection panel could resist, even if they were compiled in what has become the depressed standard of our domestic cricket. If Williams and Murray were excluded from the 22, Keith Mitchell and Vance Amory, their respective prime ministers, would have led their people in collective apoplexy.Yet there are reasons other than runs for their presence.Williams’ experience is the same factor that brought Sherwin Campbell back into the team for the series against Pakistan in Sharjah when Brian Lara and Ramnaresh Sarwan were missing with their injuries.Only if Lara’s elbow and Sarwan’s back remain immobile would a place be available for Williams in the starting eleven and, as with Campbell in Sharjah, it could only be at No. 3.Should a new opener be required, the dashing young Grenadian left-hander Devon Smith is surely the man. He is 12 years Williams junior, outscored him and everyone else in the preliminary round of the Busta, carries an unmistakable touch of class and has a long-term future in West Indies cricket.A year ago, against South Africa, it was Garrick, the little 25-year-old Jamaican jack-in-the-box who briefly filled the role. His treatment since can only have left him in a state of utter bewilderment.He was confined to four matches on subsequent tours of Zimbabwe, Kenya and Sri Lanka and is now scratched after a Busta Cup in which he averaged 41.Had there been the equivalent of a Devon Smith or a Garrick among the keepers, there would be also be no need for Murray at this point of his career, no matter how many runs he scores. But, as with Courtney Browne when Jacobs was harshly suspended for one Test in Zimbabwe last July, Murray has been summoned because no young contender has come through.Jeremy has cause to be just as perplexed as Garrick.At a time when the search for fast bowlers has been as futile as that for Winston Hall, he is 22 and has 86 wickets in the last three Busta seasons at an average of 19.82, 40 of them this year at 18.83.He has already been chosen for two tours, to Australia and Zimbabwe, but these have been cut short by injuries and his other international appearances have been confined to a few inconclusive one-day matches.The likely reason Mike Findlay and his colleagues reckon he won’t be of value at the highest level is that he isn’t much above medium-pace. Carl Hooper certainly didn’t hide his opinion when he refused to give him a single over in a one-day international against South Africa at Kensington last season.Jeremy has been included among the second batch of students for the Shell Academy but Rudi Webster and his Australian gurus may have to turn him into a modern-day Wes Hall before he can gain recognition. Not everyone’s Busta form is relevant, it seems.Collymore’s similar lack of speed is also the likeliest explanation why he is now categorised as purely a limited-overs specialist. Unfortunately, he simply has to live with the restrictions placed on his action by his mended back and plug away, as he always does.Their little extra pace and penetration brought in, for the first time, Darren Powell and Adam Sanford, both described as stiff by more than one batsman who faced them this season.It was the same term applied to King two seasons back against Zimbabwe and Pakistan when he looked the business. First hobbled by a stress fracture of the foot and then a hernia, he hasn’t been the same since and, like so many fast bowlers of late, has now faded into the background.Lawson, the tall Jamaican who was summoned as a replacement on the tour of Sri Lanka last December, and Tino Best, the bustling little Barbadian, are two 20-year-olds with a turn of speed. But they have been made to wait their turn, probably on the ‘A’ team to tour to England in the summer.Given the present unresponsive nature of West Indian pitches and the quality of the Indian batting, it is not a bad series for young, untried fast bowlers to miss. Their time will come. For Williams and Murray, it has come again and again and again.Elite panel, what about TV?As I understand it, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has appointed elite panels of eight umpires and five match referees to ensure that Test cricket is officiated by the best there is and to eliminate charges of nationalistic bias.It, therefore, defeats its purpose when it leaves decisions on television replays in the hands of whoever the home authority cares to appoint as third umpires, especially now that use of such technology is to be extended.It is a post, more often than not, given to umpires long past their sell-by date or else not good enough to stand in the middle.Time and again, verdicts have contradicted the crystal clear evidence on the screen.The most recent, and most glaring, instance was the red light pressed by the Pakistani, Ahthar Zaidi, to give Sherwin Campbell run out in the first Test in Sharjah when a one-eyed man sitting upside down in front of a cloudy 12-inch black-and-white set could see Campbell was in his ground.With the prospect of more work under the new arrangement, the job assumes greater responsibility. It can no longer be left to home town has-beens.