Dear Editor,
No one can predict the future, but I am not overly perturbed about the potential safety issues in the visit to Pakistan by our cricketers. While I do not pretend to understand the motivation of so-called terrorists, West Indian cricketers are not among the most likely to generate mayhem, and I do not believe that the selection of players reflected their or their countries’ safety concerns. Those selected are all pretty decent players who are capable of making names for themselves, but no one would argue that they are household names. As usual no explanations are provided even for the exclusion of the captain Carlos Brathwaite, or indeed for the failure to include any Barbadian in the squad that was announced at the latest possible time. So the question remains as to the rationale behind the selections. The tour is for three matches and therefore it is reasonable to exclude prior contractual obligations as the explanation. Some employers tend to pay more attention to costs, and others more attention to potential revenues. Cricket West Indies, I believe, falls into the first category. In addition the desire to demonstrate control and to punish are very strong motivating forces in the board, so that they would have reflexively rejected the argument that the selection of household names would have attracted enough interest to more than compensate for the additional costs to be incurred from contracting household names. In other words even if a persuasive argument could have been made that considerably more profit would have been earned by including more well-known names in the squad, such an argument would have been rejected. If only we could legislate a requirement for reasons for all important decisions of a public nature!
Yours faithfully,
Romain Pitt
