Not a single player from league champions St David’s was named in the Bermuda team announced last week for next month’s trip to Dubai, but national coach Arnold Manders says attendance at training was an important criteria for selection.

Add to that other players who don’t show commitment to the national programme and it becomes frustrating for the national coach to put the best team together for overseas competition, as Manders has found out.

“If they are not mentally ready to make a commitment, then I’d prefer to work with people that are committed to the team and willing to go the extra mile,” said the coach.

“There are a lot of players who are left out and I don’t need to comment why they are left out, but you can work it out. They have either had a poor attendance record or haven’t trained at all. For those who want to say why those players are not in, they are taking the coaching staff for fools.”

Manders said there was a requirement for players to attend at 80 percent of the sessions to be considered for selection, but the two St David’s players who did train — Fiqre Crockwell and Justin Pitcher — only attended 10 and nine of the 29 sessions.

“Then people say ‘why was this person not picked’, well they haven’t been training,” he pointed out. “In my generation it was a different ball game, when we had a training squad of 40 you would see 40 people training. Now you have a squad of 36 and only about 15 of them are training.”

Bermuda also has a smaller pool of players to choose from than many of the other top Associate countries, including countries who rely on players from other countries. Years ago Bermuda had that luxury, too, when top players from the West Indies played in the local league and became eligible to play for Bermuda.

“All the other countries have a bigger pool, like the United States who have three or four former Test players playing for them,” said the former Bermuda captain.

“When they used to recruit policemen here they used to ask them if they play cricket, now it’s not like that. It’s not just the Police team, you have Nationals who pulled out who had the English expats who now play in our Evening League.”

Manders also points a finger at the clubs who aren’t producing the quality of player the national team desires. “We only have a small pool and then when we get them, they haven’t learned anything from the clubs and it is like a whole new ball game to them with the stuff we do (in national programme).

“Coming to me at the national level I’ve got to teach them how to play forward defensive, teach them how to drive, teach them how to think, teach them how to set a field.

“I’m getting a group of players who have been through a whole season but they are not fit, then the general public thinks we are wasting our money on them but who else on this Island is competing at an elite level? Our Bermuda team is in the top 25 in the world and for what we have to work with we do good. We qualified for the World Cup, the Under 19 World Cup and we could qualify for the T20 World Cup. What other country this small has done that?”

Even so, Bermuda cricket is at a crossroads, the national coach concedes.

“I’m trying to stress it to the players that it’s do or die for Bermuda cricket right now. We need to find a way to get into that top six so we can get more funding. If we go back to Division 3 and try to get back to Division 2 we won’t have the funding money to be able to prepare adequately.”