Wallace questions CWI’s decision to rest players ahead of Sri Lanka series

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – For­mer West In­dies open­ing bats­man Phi­lo Wal­lace is not in agree­ment with the de­ci­sion by Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) to rest some of its play­ers ahead of next month’s home se­ries against Sri Lan­ka.

The Windies are sched­uled to play Sri Lan­ka in three One Day In­ter­na­tion­als (ODIs), three T20Is and two Test match­es, with the first match of the ODI se­ries slat­ed for June 3.

Speak­ing dur­ing the Ma­son and Guest ra­dio show on Tues­day, Wal­lace, who played 33 ODIs and sev­en Tests for the West In­dies, con­tend­ed that play­ers should have been par­tic­i­pat­ing in the West In­dies Cham­pi­onship.

“All that we’re hear­ing is that we’re rest­ing play­ers. Shamar Joseph now is deal­ing with an is­sue, so that’s more down time, hop­ing to come back for the fi­nals.

“We have Sri Lan­ka at our doorsteps but yet our main play­ers are be­ing giv­en more down time when we should be load­ing them up for the se­ries be­cause we’re play­ing six match­es in Ja­maica against Sri Lan­ka and then they come down to An­tigua for two Test match­es. So, it’s a lot of crick­et and the guys’ mus­cles need to work in­to that crick­et, if not they’re go­ing to find them­selves strug­gling,” Wal­lace said.

“All the strength and con­di­tion­ing train­ing they’re do­ing, the ac­tu­al con­di­tion­ing is go­ing to come dur­ing play­ing time.”

How­ev­er, CWI’s Di­rec­tor of Crick­et, Miles Bas­combe, re­spond­ed by say­ing al­most all of the play­ers were cur­rent­ly play­ing crick­et.

“Shai Hope is the on­ly per­son who has not fea­tured so far. Alzarri [Joseph] I think re­turned fol­low­ing the end of the first round, so we will work with him to en­sure that he is ready for the in­ter­na­tion­al sea­son.

“And re­mem­ber that what we’re look­ing at is en­sur­ing that we have all our play­ers for the start of the in­ter­na­tion­al home se­ries and Shai Hope has a huge role to play in that,” Bas­combe said.

CMC