Sir Vivian Richards has questioned the commitment of the current West Indies players and expressed his disappointment over the team’s performance and early exit from the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia.
Four teams remain in the World Cup – India, Pakistan, England and New Zealand – with the semi-finals looming. However, West Indies did not make it to the Super 12, the first time that has ever happened in the team’s history.
This latest embarrassment from the two-time world champions has not gone down well with the Master Blaster who won two ICC World Cup titles with West Indies in 1975 and 1979.
During an interview on the Good Morning Jo Jo radio show in Antigua, Richards didn’t hold back.
“I’m really, really, really disappointed. I honestly felt they would have struggled to get out of the qualifying stages to get into the Super 12,” said Richards, who was recently named the Lankan Premier League ambassador.
“It didn’t look good at all. One of the things that stood out to me, when we won against Zimbabwe, the way we carried ourselves, like we had won the World Cup, I felt we should have calmed it down a bit.
“This is supposed to be our best chance for us to win something at the international level because this is a team that showed this kind of perspective. Here I think we have prepared ourselves that if we were to win something and win it quickly, it would be the T20 World Cup. Because of this, I am very, very, very disappointed. I’m not sure why, but I am.”
Some of the blame, Richards thinks, must be laid squarely at the feet of the players, whose loyalty to the region must be questioned; that they prefer T20 leagues around the world over playing for the West Indies.
It is claimed that you hear players sometimes saying ‘CWI knows my schedule’ and things like that. It shouldn’t be like that. You have to tell the CWI what your schedule is and see how best to work around it if your heart and soul is in representing the West Indies at that particular level,” Richards argued.
“But what I’ve found is that there are some who want to go and do what they want in terms of the contracts they have with different franchises. To go back and automatically enter when you have individuals who have been performing and been around and basically haven’t gotten a look because these individuals are the favorites of such. I think we should have at least found a way earlier to reverse that and have guys that are capable of playing, and not guys that pick and choose when they feel like playing.”
