I want to play for the national squad

Our cricket is in dire straits.

I’ve been talking to my family, David Moore and my job about coming back to the national team. I can’t sit back and watch this anymore knowing I can do something to make a difference and better the team. It hurts too much to sit back and not do anything to help when I know I can.

April is a big tournament. We need to do well because otherwise we’ll get relegated and that would be the end of our cricket at an international level.

Disastrous is the top word for the UAE tour. The UAE Tour, the tour to Namibia and the Americas Championship – we can now assess what’s been going on with the national programme.

We’ve given a lot of players their deserved opportunity to play at the international level. We had to give some others a chance and that’s why many of the senior players like myself, Sluggo and Janeiro stepped back. They needed their chance, but after three tours we can assess they aren’t going to make the cut at the international level

Some of them have the potential of playing at this level but they still need to develop, but some of the others aren’t going to make it at all. We have to be honest about that. They just can’t cut it.

Bermuda is in dire straits with the April qualifiers so we need to get our best people out to make sure we don’t get relegated. That’s what the priority should be.

We have to be honest that we don’t have the depth to be missing three or four veteran players and still perform.

The problem is we’re not producing enough quality cricketers. We were missing our youth cricket programmes for so long that it’s hurt us. We do have some 15-year-olds and some 16-year-olds who could be ready in five to 10 years to play international cricket, but the generation in between that we lost has left us with a gap who can play at the international level.

We lost a lot of them and that generation only produced a handful of quality players.

Therefore the guys who are older, have to be there and help carry us through.

As soon as a cricketer reaches 35 or 36 in Bermuda, we hear the cry of ‘Bring in the youngster. Bring in the youngsters, but they’re not ready — not at this level. We’ve seen that now. We have to stop offering excuses.

Bermuda is playing the best teams in the world at the associate level and we just can’t afford it. We lost to the Cayman Islands. The Bahamas almost beat us. We weren’t even close to winning any games against the UAE.

This group is not good enough to set aside the senior players.

The senior players can make a difference. That doesn’t mean they should automatically be selected because they are a senior player – we have to perform too. We can’t go on reputation and we have to perform on a consistent basis. That is get a good score and then go four games without one. The senior players have to carry the team.

The young players are not ready at all. That doesn’t mean we cast them aside either — we still need to work and develop those who have the potential to play at the international level. It’s going to take time and they should be apart of the national programme and part of the national teams in practice games or games that don’t mean anything.