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Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Roland Butcher: ‘West Indies are struggling – we've not hit rock bottom yet'
'England have started to experience what West Indies have experienced for the last 10 years.' Roland Butcher rings the bell before the second Test match between the two sides. 'England have started to experience what West Indies have experienced for the last 10 years.' Roland Butcher rings the bell before the second Test match between the two sides. Photograph: Philip Brown/Popperfoto/Getty Images After West Indies secured a one-day series draw against Ireland on Sunday their captain, Shai Hope, was asked about the team's imminent visit to England. 'We played them at the end of last year and we won that series so we know they're going to be coming at us even harder this time,' he said. 'We're looking forward to it. We know they're going to be a tough, tough opponent but we're always ready to play anyone.' Roland Butcher, child of Barbados, once of England and more recently a West Indies selector, has a less optimistic outlook: 'We're struggling, and the struggle is not over. We haven't hit rock bottom yet.' The concentration of power across all three formats in the hands of one coach and selector – Daren Sammy – is what Butcher fears 'is going to finally push us to the bottom'. Advertisement Related: Jimmy Anderson: 'I know my body has got a certain amount of deliveries left in it' Butcher's knowledge of Caribbean cricket is broad and deep, with 15 years as head coach of the University of the West Indies sports academy, one serving on the national team's selection panel alongside another familiar name in Desmond Haynes, and many commentating on matches around the region. He was appointed as a selector in December 2022 but dismissed a year later, with full control of the team eventually handed to Sammy, who picks and also coaches the senior side across all formats as of April this year. 'In Desmond and myself you've got over 100 years of experience at the highest level, still capable, still wanting to contribute,' Butcher says. 'I've moved on and Desmond has moved on as well, but we've got this knowledge, we want to help and they're struggling. 'It was a very left-field change, and not a change that I agree with. Not because I'm no longer a selector, it's just not suitable for somewhere like the West Indies. In 2023, they had the best run they've had for 25 years in terms of results and for some reason they decided to make Daren the only selector and coach. I mean, madness. And it's going to be tested already because they're over here and then in a couple of weeks Australia is arriving for a Test series. I mean, how can you coach three teams? How can you be the only selector for three teams? It's just absolute madness. Advertisement England and Surrey seamer Gus Atkinson has been ruled out of the upcoming Metro Bank One-Day Internationals against the West Indies due to a right hamstring strain. Atkinson sustained the injury during England's Rothesay Test victory over Zimbabwe at Trent Bridge last week. He will now undergo a period of rehabilitation under the supervision of the England medical team. No replacement will be added to the ODI squad. England, led by captain Harry Brook, will contest three ODIs with the series getting underway with the opening match on Thursday 29 May at Edgbaston. ODI squad: Harry Brook (Yorkshire) – Captain Tom Banton (Somerset) Jacob Bethell (Warwickshire) Jos Buttler (Lancashire) Brydon Carse (Durham) Ben Duckett (Nottinghamshire) Tom Hartley (Lancashire) Will Jacks (Surrey) Saqib Mahmood (Lancashire) Jamie Overton (Surrey) Matthew Potts (Durham) Adil Rashid (Yorkshire) Joe Root (Yorkshire) Jamie Smith (Surrey) Luke Wood (Lancashire) Metro Bank ODIs 1st ODI: England v West Indies, Thursday 29 May 2025, Edgbaston, Birmingham 2nd ODI: England v West Indies, Sunday 1 June 2025, Sophia Gardens, Cardiff 3rd ODI: England v West Indies, Tuesday 3 June 2025, Kia Oval, London 'What they've done is they've said the chairmen of selectors in the territories – so in Barbados or in Trinidad – now becomes a talent scout as well. But there's no selection process for them. The selector in Barbados, he's a man in a full-time job. When does Sammy watch regional cricket? Desmond Haynes and myself, that's all we did, watch cricket, all over the place. I was a youth selector as well so I'd be at the regional tournaments, under‑15, under-17, under-19, and I got to see all the young talent coming through. The talent scouts can't do that. And they didn't just get rid of the senior men's selectors. The youth selectors as well, they changed that.' Advertisement In Butcher's year as a selector, the West Indies men's side won 51% of their games, the only time this century they have won the majority of their matches across all formats in a calendar year. 'When I left, I said to Desmond: 'We were a success.' There's no other West Indian selector that has left and can say they were a success, they were always let go because the team failed,' he says. 'We were a success. So that will always stay with me. The powers that be, they wanted to move to a different situation. But we were a success and we were on the right path. There's no question about that. They can't take that away.' West Indies have been affected by the proliferation of lucrative franchise leagues and their habit of distracting – or just taking – international players. 'But I think England have started to experience what West Indies have experienced for the last 10 years,' Butcher says. 'I don't think many countries looked at what was happening with West Indies and ever thought: 'You know what, this'll happen to us too.' For the last 10 years, West Indies teams have been weakened by domestic leagues and everybody was sitting back saying: 'Oh, West Indies, they're mercenaries.' They didn't think it would come home to roost.' After a winter in Barbados, Butcher is settling back in to life in England before a summer of commentary and promoting his new book, Breaking Barriers. It certainly doesn't want for interesting stories: being brought up in poverty by his grandmother on Barbados's east coast, being uprooted to join his parents in Stevenage, hoovering up trophies in a wonderful Middlesex side, becoming England's first black player before having his international ambitions crushed by a serious eye injury, and going into and swiftly giving up on cricket coaching. 'I found the English system too rigid. It was all from a book. I didn't feel confident enough that I would be allowed to do what I thought should happen.' He turned instead to football, met a then-unknown Brendan Rodgers while studying for his Uefa B licence and was recruited by him to join Reading's academy, before being left behind when Rodgers was headhunted by Chelsea and from there launched on a stellar coaching career. Advertisement 'If he hadn't gone I think I would have stuck it longer,' Butcher says. 'What pushed me out eventually was the fact that I knew John Barnes very well and he was having it really tough. He couldn't get interviews, couldn't get shortlisted, couldn't get nothing. So after Brendan left, it dawned on me if guys of that level are struggling to make it professionally, it's gonna be tough for me.' Now 71, Butcher has no intention of drifting away from cricket. He is very active as the president of Barbados Royals girls cricket club, the region's first all-female club, and a patron of the Ace Programme, the British charity trying to drive engagement in the sport among underrepresented communities. 'While I'm still capable physically and mentally to do something, I think I've got a lot to offer. I'm a cricket man and cricket has been my life.'
Irish Times
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Vietnam marks 50 years since the end of war
Vietnam is celebrating the end of the Vietnam War on Wednesday with a grand military parade and an air show 50 years after the fall of Ho Chi Minh City, the event that marked the definitive conclusion of the decades-long conflict. The historic anniversary commemorates the first act of the country's reunification on April 30th, 1975 when Communist-run North Vietnam seized Ho Chi Minh City, the capital of the US-backed South. The victory, about two years after Washington withdrew its last combat troops from the country, marked the end of a 20-year conflict that killed some 3 million Vietnamese and nearly 60,000 Americans, many of them young soldiers conscripted into the military. The fall of Ho Chi Minh City was seared into many memories by the images of US helicopters evacuating some 7,000 people, many of them Vietnamese, as North Vietnamese tanks closed in. The final flight took off from the roof of the US embassy at 7.53am on April 30th, carrying the last US marines out of Ho Chi Minh City. READ MORE Captured Viet Cong prisoners being moved by US marines in March 1965. Photograph: Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images Ho Chi Minh City was later renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honour of the North's founding leader. 'Communist troops rolled into the South Vietnamese capital virtually unopposed, to the great relief of the population which had feared a bloody last-minute battle,' said a cable from one of the Reuters reporters in the city on the day it fell. The cable described the victorious army as made up of 'formidably armed' troops in jungle green fatigues but also of barefoot teenagers. The formal reunification of Vietnam was completed a year later, 22 years after the country had been split in two following the end of French colonial rule. 'The victory of April 30th is the victory of human conscience and righteousness,' a spokeswoman for Vietnam's foreign ministry told reporters last week. She noted that Vietnam and the United States normalised diplomatic relations in 1995 and deepened ties in 2023 during a visit to Hanoi by former US president Joe Biden. That bond is now being tested by the threat of crippling 46 per cent tariffs on Vietnamese goods that Biden's successor, Donald Trump, announced in April. The tariffs have been largely paused until July and talks are under way. But if confirmed, they could undermine Vietnam's export-led growth that has attracted large foreign investments. While Hanoi has re-established relations with the United States, it has maintained close ties with Russia, which is its top supplier of weapons. A US air force strategic air command B-52 Stratofortress drops a string of 750-pound in the Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War, in October 1965. Photograph: US air force/The New York Times Vietnam has also nurtured closer relations with northern neighbour China despite a complex history involving several conflicts and a rivalry in the disputed South China Sea. China is now a big investor in its economy and the source of many of the components that are used in products that are then exported to the US Marc Riboud's famous photograph of Jan Rose Kasmir during the 1967 march on the Pentagon, which helped turn US public opinion against the Vietnam War. Photograph: Marc Riboud/Magnum Photos Underlining the warming ties, Vietnam's defence ministry invited the Chinese army to take part in the military parade and 118 soldiers will walk through the streets of Ho Chi Minh City 'to honour the international support Vietnam received during its struggle for independence,' said state media. They will be marching alongside about 13,000 Vietnamese soldiers, policemen and members of other forces in a procession following an air show featuring Russian-made fighter jets and military helicopters. – Reuters Joan Baez performs at an anti-Vietnam War demonstration in London, 1965. Photograph: Keystone/
