THE FORM of first-choice West Indies wicket-keeper Denesh Ramdin is a worry for chairman of the selectors Clyde Butts.“I also have a concern with Ramdin at the moment, but there is no doubt in my mind that he is still the best wicketkeeper that we have in the Caribbean at the moment,” Butts said.“Yes, he hasn’t done well with the bat, but remember, he has been doing decently behind the stumps, and if you speak to him, I’m sure he’s going to say that he has not been the best in his wicketkeeping.”Prior to the start of the third Digicel Test at Kensington Oval, which the West Indies lost by seven wickets to lose the three-match series 2-0, Butts said it would have been difficult to exclude Ramdin, who managed just 63 runs at an average of 15.75, missed a few catches and also muffed a run out.“I think one of the things that you have to consider as well, is what kind of cricket is being played at the moment. Do we take somebody from out of the blue to bring them into a Test match?” asked Butts.The chairman said Jamaican-born Combined Campuses and Colleges (CCC) wicketkeeper Chadwick Walton is in England playing with the West Indies “A” team.“From all reports, he has been keeping very well. Yet again, he hasn’t been doing well with the bat. “But I think you will probably see things start happening after the Test series, because I think it is hard to bring somebody in just to play in a Test match at the moment where there isn’t cricket going on to know what’s happening with that player,” he contended.Butts was also very explicit in his comments in relation to Jamaican Carlton Baugh and Barbadian Patrick Browne, the two 28-year-olds, who some cricket pundits reckon could also replace Ramdin.“Personally, I think Carlton Baugh has been a good performer at regional cricket. He has been there over the years and we have given him a chance,” Butts said of the diminutive right-hander, who averages 36.11, with 11 centuries, in first-class cricket.“I think the last chance he had was when we took him to New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates and he was very disappointing to us. “I mean, it is not that you get out or you do things but how you approach the game,” Butts said.Browne, who averaged 33.50 in five ODIs for the West Indies in 2008, has taken the most dismissals among wicketkeepers in the last two regional first-class seasons, despite being dropped by the Barbados selectors.“We [have] got to be careful when we talk about players that we, the selectors, are actually not getting to see. “Yes, Patrick Browne, I think, over the years has done well for Barbados . . . When he played for West Indies, he did reasonably well, but I think there were some concerns, more or less, about his fitness and things like that when he was playing. “He went off the boil a little. I mean he’s not even in the Barbados team at the moment, but I want you to know that we, as selectors, consider everybody in the Caribbean that is playing cricket to be available to play for West Indies,” Butts said.
