While a Test player, who was dropped for the West Indies tour of New Zealand, Shai Hope, has been told to get back to basics, a One-Day International specialist, Andre Russell, was put on a watch list.
Following a series of dismal performances Hope was excluded from the West Indies team. He averages 26.27 in Tests; 52.20 in ODIs; and 21.63 in T20 Internationals.
His most memorable moments came during a 2017 tour of England when he struck 147 and 117 in back-to-back innings of the same Test.
His form declined since then with the best average being in ODIs.
“He needs to work hard and be meaningful. He needs to understand what was working for him when he was playing very well and he needs to be able to revisit that,” said Barbadian Franklyn Stephenson, who played for the West Indies Young Cricketers team that toured England in 1978 and now runs a cricket academy in his home country.
“He needs to sit down with somebody who understands, but mainly with him it is a mental thing. But that comes down to the physical, when the feet don’t move and he has really got a big problem there trying to open up on his drives.”
Barbados TODAY online newspaper reported Stephen commenting on Hope 2017 double century, “when I saw him playing those two innings at Headingley, he had a lot of potential. But it is okay to have that in the meeting room but you got to be able to transfer that into the middle”.
Around the time of Hope’s dropping, Russel made a statement that has selectors puzzled and forced them to adopt a wait-and-see approach.
Immediately upon his return from in the Indian Premier League he declared himself as needing time off from the game to “clear his head.”
The problem is that the 32-year-old is reportedly committed to play in the Sri Lankan Premier League that begins on Nov. 21, a date that clashes with the WI scheduled New Zealand tour.
“I don’t know what decision he has made,” said convener of the board of selectors, Roger Harper.
“Where he is playing or if he is playing. I can only look and see what he had told me and then look at what happens subsequently,” Sportsmax reported Harper saying.
“He is free to make those decisions. We will look to see what the situation is, how it develops, and take it from there.”
