It’s not fair to Shai Hope, a shocking performance by West Indies batters. West Indies could’ve won the first and the second Tests. The excuse cannot be that both Josephs are ruled out injured, so the team has been at a disadvantage. West Indies never had a bad bowling unit in the past decade; our batting in all forms of the game has been shocking!

Joshua Da Silva, or even Jason Mohammed, should be brought back into the team. Sammy, Reifer and Seeteram might as well put on their whites and take the field! Tevin Imlach is a phenomenal wicketkeeper, but at the international level, you can’t be in the team with that alone; you’ve got to get runs under your name.

Also, why is Amir Jangoo being sidelined in all formats?

We are wasting Hope’s golden years by persisting with average players around him. It seems as though only ruthless selections apply to Trinidadian and Guyanese players. Imagine Steve Smith called Shivnarine Chanderpaul to ask about his technique and patches under the eyes to help him cope in day-night conditions when batting. His son, Tagenarine, is in the same corner of the world and can’t get past 40 as an opening batter!

Hope’s got an allergic reaction to his eyes, he’s literally batting half-blind, and he’s scoring half-centuries and centuries! The best batters constantly find ways to improve, always studying what they can do better. Floyd Reifer - what batting experience does he have? How did he get the job? He should be sacked! Root just scored a 100 in Australia for the first time in his career at age 35. The excuses about taking the positives and moving on are not cutting it anymore. I fear that there will come a point in time, just like Lara, when people will turn on him and start making him the problem for the team’s results.

Can the regional media team stop endlessly posting highlights of Hope’s innings to cover up the poor results of the team across formats and scraping the barrel with optimistic quotes? It is not helping.

We’ve got to get to the root of the problem. Get the best-performing players in the team, starting with Amir Jangoo, Khary Pierre and Kevlon Anderson. Imagine the vice-captain of the Test team is on the bench, a nd Khary Pierre, with 41 wickets in a first-class season for 2025, is nowhere near the squad. Look at South Africa’s resurgence in all formats. Sammy should be emulating that.