Tony Cozier

Acclaim for the World Twenty20 championship has echoed from every quarter.

After 10 years blocked from West Indies selection mainly by a suspect action, Shane Shillingford has come into the reckoning for the current home series against South Africa.

After two days of the World Twenty20, a few certainties have already been established.

The five youngest players in the West Indies ‘A’ team that swept all three matches against Zimbabwe in their recent short series in Grenada have been placed in the West Indies Cricket Board’s new High Performance Centre (HPC) in Barbados rather than included in the squad of 14 for the tour of Bangladesh May 2-25.

The West Indies Players Association (WIPA) has taken objection to a report that appeared in my column last Sunday concerning a letter it wrote to the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) on Kieron Pollard’s selection for the home series against Zimbabwe in February.

There are a host of sub-plots to the ICC World Twenty20 Championship that starts at the Guyana National Stadium at Providence on Friday, cricket’s second global event in these parts since the World Cup three years ago.

When details of the Indian Premier League (IPL) were first announced, Julian Hunte expressed his concern about its potential impact on West Indies cricket.

Lendl Simmons and Dwayne Smith are two naturally gifted cricketers in whom the West Indies have invested a lot of time and money.

One international career was once more surprisingly revived, a couple of others are ready to reboot after injury and a few more were terminally ended or put on hold as the West Indies yesterday named their squad of 15 for the imminent International Cricket Council (ICC) Twenty20 World championship in the Caribbean.

At last some positive news from the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) with the prospect of more to come.

In the overall scheme of things, six limited-overs matches between two of international cricket’s weakest teams counts for little.

Much like his batting, Chris Gayle’s reputation has gone through several phases these past few months.

Amidst a cluster of depressingly paltry totals in the regional first-class tournament, moaning from predictable quarters about the pink ball and the never-ending sniping between Dinanath Ramnarine and his latest counterpart on the WICB, events half a world away brought a little more welcome cheer to West Indies cricket these past few weeks.

-Keiron Pollard has not yet played a test match but he is the first West Indian superstar to have a megarich bank account solely by being a Twenty20 special talent He hasn’t played a single Test match.

West Indies fast bowler Fidel Edwards faces the prospect of another year out of the game following spinal surgery in Jamaica three weeks ago to remove a herniated disc.

West Indies cricket selectors are desperately trawling through a worryingly short list of potential candidates to replace injured key players who have been ruled out of the forthcoming series of five One-Day and two Twenty20 Internationals in Australia.

Pink balls, playing at nights under lights and, according to chief executive, Ernest Hilaire, “a cricket festival atmosphere.”

Chris Gayle summed it up neatly. “I think people look at us now and think a bit differently, based on how we went about this series, even though we lost 2-0,” the captain said after the final Test against Australia on Sunday.

In a radical move aimed at regenerating interest in regional cricket, four matches in next season’s first-class tournament will be played under floodlights using a pink ball, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) announced yesterday.

The pitch at the WACA ground in Perth is, in every way, the centre of attention for the third and final Test between Australia and the West Indies, starting tomorrow (10.30 pm tonight east Caribbean time).