ST JOHN’S, Antigua, CMC – Barbados-born former England batsman Roland Butcher has been appointed the newest member of West Indies men’s senior and youth selection panels.
Butcher, 69, will reunite with lead selector Desmond Haynes, his former Middlesex teammate in the English County Championship, on the senior panel, and will work alongside former Jamaica captain and West Indies leg-spinner Robert Haynes on the youth panel.
“It’s a great honour and a privilege to be given the opportunity to serve West Indies cricket,” Butcher said in a Cricket West Indies (CWI) news release yesterday.
“I’m eager to get started to work alongside the other members of the selection panels as we look to ensure the growth and improvement in West Indies cricket at all levels.”
CWI said the appointment of Butcher was confirmed at a board of directors meeting this past Monday. The first task for Butcher and the senior selection panel that also comprises interim head coach Andre Coley will be to select squads for upcoming tours of Zimbabwe and South Africa between January and March next year. Butcher, the first African person to play for England, played three Tests, all on the 1980-81 tour of the Caribbean, and three ODIs.
After his playing career, he went into coaching – not only cricket – but football too, earning a UEFA coaching badge and he counts Leicester City manager Brendon Rogers among his contemporaries in that regard. Butcher was Bermuda cricket head coach from 2000 to 2001 and he was director of sports on the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies in Barbados from 2004 until his retirement three years ago.
