Kirk Edwards has hit back – without his bat.
The deposed Barbados T20 captain said he felt insulted by chairman Hendy Wallace and the new selection committee, stating that the panel failed to inform him that he’d been dropped.
“I have not been told [anything], not a word,” said the newly recalled West Indies batsman at the 3Ws Oval yesterday. “I am very disappointed with the level of disrespect I’ve been shown by the new selectors, but at the end of the day they pick who they want, so it’s not my business.”
Earlier this month Wallace announced a provisional 23-man squad for next year’s Caribbean T20 tournament that didn’t include Edwards or fellow Test player Kemar Roach.
And this was before a single ball had been bowled in the domestic Sagicor General T20 competition, leaving many pundits to question the thinking surrounding the choices.
Wallace said at the time that Edwards was “not part of our initial plans” but conceded that players could be added to the training squad.
The snub to Edwards was, however, softened by his recall for the West Indies tour of Bangladesh, after he’d been dropped following a run of low Test scores (1, 0, 7 and 0) in England earlier this year.
His return has caused some raised eyebrows across the region. Former Windward Islands manager Tony Lafond wondered whether “we are going back to the days of insularity” in light of Dominica’s Shane Shillingford being overlooked for Bangladesh.
The 27-year-old Edwards said he had taken everything in stride after using his time out of the limelight to work on the basics.
“I wanted to play consistently but everything happens for a reason so I am not at all sad,” he revealed. “In life you have bad times and you have good times so you just have to keep with it.
“Confidence is something that stays with you. You might not be as sure about doing a particular thing but my confidence is always there,” he maintained.
Edwards led Barbados to the semi-finals of the last regional T20 competition but saw his side fall to a humbling five-wicket loss to Trinidad and Tobago at home in front of thousands of spectators.
This was after the Bajans entered the contest as odds-on favourites following big victories in three of their four preliminary matches.
But even then Edwards’ place in the side was questioned by many after a long run of single-digit scores at the top of the order.
