Former fast bowler Richard ‘Prof’ Edwards has called for Cricket West Indies (CWI) to take a radical approach to rebuild the fortunes of West Indies cricket, following a dismal showing at the ICC T20 World Cup.

Having entered the tournament as defending champions, the regional team crashed out of it after losing four of the five games played.  The team’s lone win came against Bangladesh and even more concerningly they were comfortably beaten in the rest of the matches.

The batting line-up, which featured the likes of experienced players Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard, Lendl Simmons, Andre Russell, and Dwayne Bravo was particularly disappointing as they never seemed to come to grips with the circumstances.

“At no time when you saw West Indies batting did they give any idea or feeling of permanence there.  The batsmen looked they were in a hurry to make shots, all the time looking for attacks.”

“When I compared how they batted with Finch and Warner of Australia for example, Rahul and Rohit for India, Williamson, and co in New Zealand and people like Babar Azam, it was looking like two different games altogether.  The class that those other players exuded when they were batting, it didn’t look like at any time we were going to stick around for very long,” he added.

In light of such a catastrophic failure, Edwards believes major changes are needed, perhaps even with the leadership of the unit.

“You have to come in and be fairly cold about what you want to do. You want to try and look at the team and the players.  How long they’ve been playing? Are they still producing?

“I would think that now you have to come in and be a little ruthless, look around and try to pick, but who are you going to pick?  Do you have the resources? Whatever it is, now is the time to build.  The supposedly experienced players never came to the party.”