Can West Indies get their maroon stars back in the red-ball set-up?

Hetmyer, who burst onto the scene and averaged 47 after his first 15 ODIs, has since regressed. A return to the ODI team hasn’t seen a return in runs. In his last 15 ODIs, he has averaged 12.61. In his last 20 T20Is, it is 17.82. He said earlier this year to the Cricketer that he still wishes to return to Test cricket, which he last played in 2019.West Indies cricket is often cited as having a depth problem. That there isn’t enough talent in the region to call players up who meet the level required. But unlike other teams, West Indies’ challenge isn’t just calling players up, it’s calling players down. People they know who have the ability to play international cricket but for whatever reason aren’t available. They also keep getting players pinched by England.However, a crucial change was announced last month that players can now be selected for Test cricket even if they have not played in the regional domestic competition. That had previously impacted all of Hope, Pooran and Hetmyer with the competition overlapping with the IPL.The old policy, according to Miles Bascombe, CWI director of cricket, “could not stand up to the current intensity of cricket schedules.”The West Indies Championship, now an eight-team tournament after the addition of a West Indies Academy side and the return of the Combined Campuses and Colleges team, mainly runs from February to April. Guyana, Hetmyer’s nation, have won seven of the past nine titles.A lot of West Indies players have to strike a balance between playing regularly and spending time with families•ILT20″It is so difficult for me to just say that I’ll go back into some red-ball cricket when the IPL is going on,” Hetmyer, who last played for Guyana’s red-ball team in 2022, said in July. “It is something that I have been thinking about, something that I’ve actually thought about a lot.”You still have to think about your family and everything, because you can’t just go into a supermarket and go, ‘I play for West Indies’, and they’ll just give you stuff for free.”Each of the players is deeply committed to playing for West Indies in their own way. Hope is ODI captain, Pooran has expressed his desire to play another 100 T20s and Hetmyer wants to reach 100 ODIs as motivation for returning to the fold.But nothing is guaranteed tomorrow and the money on offer to league hop and look after your family is better than churning out red-ball runs in February. Pooran knows that more than most after being involved in a car crash in 2015 that almost took away his ability to walk.”It is still one of the legacies of T20 cricket, sadly, that so many of the guys have found the red-ball game not to be fitting their long-term agenda,” Ian Bishop said on the Sky Cricket podcast earlier this year. “And I can’t blame them. That’s where the biggest revenue comes in.”It is worth pointing out that playing Test cricket is far from financially negligible. West Indies’ match fees sit at around US$10,000. Being a full-time cricketer for West Indies is a lucrative job. It’s just not as lucrative as playing for West Indies and others.The trio of Pooran, Hetmyer and Hope are not alone in being international white-ball players with an interest in the longer format. Akeal Hosein has previously said he wishes to play Test cricket, while Kyle Mayers has recently fallen out of red-ball contention.Ultimately, there is suspicion/hope that if you get a couple, you could get all of them. No doubt a reservation of joining a weakened Test side is an element of ‘what’s the point’ if you’re going to lose. But West Indies have the players to be competitive now.”When we’re growing up as kids we want to play for West Indies,” Hope said about his team-mate Pooran’s achievement of overtaking Pollard. “Sometimes we don’t think about playing 100 games, 200 games. It’s something he must cherish. It’s an honour to play for West Indies and we always talk about that amongst each other.”Despite falling to a series loss against England, there is a coherence to West Indies’ T20 cricket. Yes, some players skip a tour here or there but there is a core unit that turns out regularly with a set goal of becoming the No.1-ranked side in the world and to become world champions. Coach Daren Sammy deserves much of the credit for that, persuading the likes of Andre Russell, Evin Lewis and Hetmyer to return when they had otherwise ceased to play.Sammy has shown it can be done to get the band back together and form a narrative around a West Indies national team. We can cross our fingers that the same could soon be true for the Test side also.