HPC: Don’t blame us!

NOT OUR fault!
The Sagicor High Performance Centre (HPC) did not pull the three Barbadian cricketers from the first national trial match at the St Catherine’s Social and Sports Club, Bayfield, St Philip, which ended on Tuesday.
That’s the word from HPC head coach Toby Radford after Shamarh Brooks, Jason Holder and Shane Dowrich missed the final two days of the high-scoring trial match on Monday and Tuesday.
Brooks and Holder were opposing captains in the match which began on Saturday, but  Radford made it clear the HPC’s two-week training camp at the 3Ws Oval was organised a month ago.
“The players are all contracted with WICB and were booked for the camp during the first week of December (last year), over a month ago,” he said.
“The BCA never requested for them to be released until the night before the match, so it wasn’t like they were suddenly pulled while they were in the middle of the game,” Radford explained.
 “ The BCA knew a month ago that there would be a camp, so we at the HPC are not at fault. They should never have been picked as they were booked for the camp,” he added.
He was responding to an article in last Monday’s Daily Nation in which this writer, without blaming any party, commented that the players “absence in the middle of a national trial match is a serious situation which the Barbados Cricket Association must address with the officials at the HPC, since in the case of Brooks and Holder, who are not certaintees in the Barbados team, it could ruin their chances of playing in the upcoming regional season”.
But Radford also pointed out that the HPC was actually helping Barbadian cricketers.
“We have personally accommodated and helped Kevin Stoute, who is not part of the HPC but would still come to the camp. We are helping Barbados.
“We’re working very hard and it is very frustrating that the impression has been given that the players were pulled from the trial,” he said.
With Devon Thomas, Kieran Powell, Veerasammy Permaul, Kevin McClean and Keron Cottoy playing in the ongoing Caribbean Twenty20 which started in Antigua last Monday, only about nine of the 15 HPC selectees are participating in the two-week camp, which is coinciding with not only that tournament which ends on January 23 at Kensington Oval, but also the Barbados trials as a second match will start tomorrow at Bayfield.
None of the three, Brooks, Holder and Dowrich, has been selected for that trial this time.