West Indies needs many more world-class players - Roger Harper

Roger Harper, the Chairman of the West Indies selectors believes the team needs many more world-class players if it is going to be able to consistently compete with the best teams in the world. He also believes the individual territories need to a better job of creating those types of players.

The 57-year-old former West Indies spinner made the points while he was a guest on Isports on i95.5fm with host Andre Errol Baptiste on Saturday.

“We need to have World Class players in our West Indies teams, players who will compete in terms of performance and in terms of the world teams and that is how our cricket and our teams will get to the top of the pile,” Harper said.

“What we have to encourage our players to do is think bigger, aim higher and think of putting in World Class performances to match with World Class players.”

However, for this to happen the regional territories need to take more responsibility.

“The West Indies team comes from the territories, they don’t fall out of the sky so we are always pointing to the West Indies board but I think the territories have a serious responsibility as well, they are the ones who need to take responsibility,” he said.

He said that perhaps the time has come to go back to the past to move forward.

“You need to get back to what was done in the past and take the responsibility to develop quality and World Class players. We have several World Class players, we have a number of them in the shortest format of the game and shortest format in particular but we also have World Class players in the Test format. You just look at the Test captain Jason Holder, who has been ranked the number one all-rounder in Test cricket for a while and then Kemar Roach up there for a while, and Shannon Gabriel whose has been doing pretty well but we need to have a team of World Class players not a scattering of World Class players."

Roger Harper, the Chairman of the West Indies selectors believes the team needs many more world-class players if it is going to be able to consistently compete with the best teams in the world. He also believes the individual territories need to a better job of creating those types of players.

The 57-year-old former West Indies spinner made the points while he was a guest on Isports on i95.5fm with host Andre Errol Baptiste on Saturday.

“We need to have World Class players in our West Indies teams, players who will compete in terms of performance and in terms of the world teams and that is how our cricket and our teams will get to the top of the pile,” Harper said.

“What we have to encourage our players to do is think bigger, aim higher and think of putting in World Class performances to match with World Class players.”

However, for this to happen the regional territories need to take more responsibility.

“The West Indies team comes from the territories, they don’t fall out of the sky so we are always pointing to the West Indies board but I think the territories have a serious responsibility as well, they are the ones who need to take responsibility,” he said.

He said that perhaps the time has come to go back to the past to move forward.

“You need to get back to what was done in the past and take the responsibility to develop quality and World Class players. We have several World Class players, we have a number of them in the shortest format of the game and shortest format in particular but we also have World Class players in the Test format. You just look at the Test captain Jason Holder, who has been ranked the number one all-rounder in Test cricket for a while and then Kemar Roach up there for a while, and Shannon Gabriel whose has been doing pretty well but we need to have a team of World Class players not a scattering of World Class players."

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