One caveat I will offer is that we don't know
for sure that it's as bad as it looks, because most of these players don't have the sample size to say for sure that they're not up to it yet. They're almost all at the start of their careers and may well go on to become proper Test quality batters. But yeah this is pretty dire lmao, because no matter how good they might end up being, you don't want your entire middle order debuting in the same game.
Of these, I feel like King, Lewis, Hope and Pooran are the ones who have the chops to play Test cricket. I'd also be disinclined to include someone like Pooran with quite so little first-class experience; even if you want to go down the route of picking players based on factors other than their domestic stats, I still think that learning to build an innings is an essential skill for a Test batter and for that reason I do think Pooran needs to go somewhere and learn that.
This is a really interesting selection of players. Obviously Mayers and Holder are the most proven at Test level. Well, Bravo too, but that ship sailed a long time ago now.
However I think you could make a reasonable case that any one of perhaps six of these players could stake a reasonable claim that they would strengthen the current top six. This is sad.
The bowling unit is probably the part of the current team out in Australia, and there aren't too many names you'd want to add to it. Jayden Seales is obviously missing, but I don't think there are many out on T20 duty who would noticeably improve the Test team. Even Rahkeem - cult hero though he may be, I don't think he provides enough of a point of difference with bat or ball to make up for the reality of having to hide a fielder.
Personally, I would argue that 2009 was the tipping point with the players' strike. I think you'd be hard pushed to find any West Indies team that was definitively full strength since then.
I absolutely agree with you about King. Given the state of the facilities in West Indies domestic cricket, a first-class average of 35 is probably equivalent to a 40+ number in most other countries, and he's shown in white-ball cricket that he's got the ability to handle the best and fastest bowlers the world has to throw at him.
Yeah, King played recently against Bangladesh A and he batted at number five. So it's good that he does seem to have an interest in playing Test cricket, even if it hasn't happened yet. I also agree that Hope couldn't be a downgrade on Da Silva - they both average 25 in Test cricket, but Hope's stats are better in absolutely every other form of cricket. I also think Hope is probably the better gloveman: Da Silva's poor footwork was glaringly noticeable in the Test just gone, especially opposite Alex Carey.
Unrelated, but in Cricket Captain saves I used to pretty regularly pick Carlos in Test cricket just to get his batting average down below my next best active player at the time.
This is really telling: while I can understand the logic of not wanting to stick to the same players who haven't been delivering, Bonner, Chase and Hope have nine Test hundreds between them. For years, Chase would have been one of the very first names on my West Indies team sheet, but since his last Test hundred in 2019 he's played 20 Tests and averaged 17.40 with the bat and making a 50 only once every 9.25 innings. The saddest thing is that this might still be better than what you'd get out of players like Reifer, Solozano, Thomas, Hodge or Greaves who've been tried as batters in that time.
Absolutely. I would also be looking to aggressively restructure the domestic structure in the West Indies to make it better mirror international cricket. Obviously this is difficult because of the lack of funding, but I can always create a nice long post explaining my ideas in the future. As a tl;dr, I'd be looking to bring back the Combined Islands team, and have the scheduling run so that the competitions are run across a series of "tours" - for example, Jamaica could tour Barbados for three first-class games and three List A games. And each of these recurring series would have perpetual trophies as well, named after great West Indian cricketers.
Obviously the money doesn't exist for that, so you'd have to try to find a way.
I've not really engaged with the rest of this post because I agreed with it and thought your statistical evidence spoke for itself. That said, here's the XI I'd want:
1.
Kraigg Brathwaite
2.
Tagenarine Chanderpaul
3.
Daniel Bell-Drummond (if he declined the offer, this place would go to Kirk McKenzie)
4.
Alick Athanaze
5.
Brandon King
6.
Shai Hope
7.
Jason Holder or Kevin Sinclair
8.
Alzarri Joseph
9.
Shamar Joseph
10.
Gudakesh Motie or Kemar Roach
11.
Jayden Seales
It's still a really long tail though, so perhaps I should be looking to refine this team a little bit.
One thing I would say is that my ideal age to select people for the first time would be about 27-29, unless they're an exceptional world-beating talent. Obviously we're talking about West Indies cricket so there's no such thing as ideal anything.
