I read the names repeatedly. Then I carefully read the release with quotes attributed to chairman of West Indies selectors Courtney Browne. No question about it. Shannon Gabriel, the West Indies fastest bowler, wasn’t there.

The absence of Sunil Narine means the regional team’s bowling attack for the ICC World Cup qualifiers in Zimbabwe in March is without its most feared ‘X factor’.

Now, with the absence of Gabriel or any other genuinely quick bowler, I am left to feel that the West Indies are entering the qualifying tournament with the wrong mindset. It’s almost as if the selectors have conceded ground ahead of time.

Perhaps the very slow and low nature of the pitches encountered during the two-Test tour of Zimbabwe affected the selectors’ thinking. But even on those pitches, Gabriel’s pace caused distinct discomfort on occasions.

Could there be another reason for Gabriel’s absence? Was his fitness in question? Or could it be his no-ball problem?

If they were overly concerned about Gabriel, the selectors could have gone for Miguel Cummins who though not express pace, hits the pitch hard and is not averse to tickling the batsman’s rib cage.

Unfortunately, Alzarri Joseph is out injured. But brave, confident selectors could have gone for someone new. Think of Clive Lloyd famously picking 21-year-old Michael Holding back in 1975 with fewer than 20 expensive first-class wickets and without a five-wicket haul; or Brian Lara selecting Fidel Edwards in 2003, having seen him in the nets. In the latter case the 21-year-old Edwards promptly rewarded his captain with a five-wicket haul on Test debut at Sabina Park.

With West Indies cricket mired in negativity and scepticism, it’s probably unfair to expect nowadays selectors to be as outlandishly brave as Lloyd and Lara were. If they were, there are a few very inexperienced but genuinely quick candidates they could look at.

The one I like most is the 23-year-old Guyanese Romario Shepherd who impressed on first-class debut at Sabina Park a year ago and shocked Barbados on a lively Kensington Oval pitch last month. Not only is Shepherd fast, he is a good, all-round cricketer with batting ability.

Jamaica boasts two or three who are genuinely quick. The strapping 20-year-old Oshane Thomas comes readily to mind. He took the wicket of the prolific opener Devon Smith with his very first ball in first-class cricket a year ago and subsequently set tongues wagging with extreme pace in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) and also for West Indies A against Sri Lanka A late last year. Obviously he is young and has time on his side to get stronger and fitter.

The towering 27-year-old Reynard Leveridge has far less time. As is by now well known, Leveridge came late to cricket and has had his struggles with injuries. However, he and Jerome Taylor formed the most fearsome new ball pair in the regional 50-over tournament a year ago, with Leveridge triggering considerable excitement.

Peculiar as it may seem, both Taylor and Leveridge are now missing from the Jamaica Super50 squad.

At 33, Taylor — recently part of the West Indies Twenty20 team in New Zealand — is in the autumn of a distinguished career which was hit hard on occasions by injury. If the feeling is that he should give way to younger blood, I won’t quarrel.

I am disappointed though that a way was not found to include Leveridge.

To be fair to Junior Bennett and his selection panel, the return of Andre Russell following his drug-related ban and the wonderful promise of the big-shouldered 21-year-old Odean Smith limited their options.

Smith, a member of the title-winning West Indies Under-19 squad in 2016, is an exciting prospect. As was shown in the CPL last year, he is capable of high pace from a run-up of just nine paces. But also, he is an extraordinarily powerful hitter of the cricket ball. On first-class debut against Trinidad and Tobago Red Force in December, on what was undoubtedly the best of the pitches prepared at Sabina this season, Smith batting at number 10, smashed 54 off 27 balls with seven sixes. His 50 came off 19 balls. He will be well worth watching if he gets going in the Super50.

For Leveridge the cruellest cut must have been the way he was handled at the back end of Jamaica’s 4-day campaign. He started the season slowly with just two wickets in his first two games. But against Trinidad and Tobago Red Force and the Guyana Jaguars at Sabina Park in December and January, I thought he bowled beautifully at times, getting six wickets in unhelpful conditions.

Given that the Jamaica Scorpions went to Kensington Oval for the final game of the season with hard evidence — from the game between the Pride and the Jaguars the previous week — that the pitch would be helpful to fast bowlers, I remain stunned that Leveridge did not make the trip.

For those who weren’t paying attention, Barbados Pride defeated Jamaica Scorpions easily, by 216 runs, on a pitch which, while being fair to batsmen, also provided bounce and pace for the faster bowlers.

Barbados Captain Shamarh Brooks hit a patient 166 in the first innings of 427 and young opener Shayne Moseley made a second-innings unbeaten century as the hosts cruised to 169-0 declared. But the most pleasing thing for Barbadians was that four young fast bowlers, Keon Harding, 21, Justin Greaves, 23, Chemar Holder, 19, and Dominic Drakes, 19, took all the wickets as Jamaica Scorpions were skittled for a second innings 133.

Aggressive with fair accuracy on a responsive pitch, Harding took 5 for 66 in that second innings.

Incredibly, Jamaica went to Barbados with just two specialist seamers, the admirable 29-year-old out-swing exponent Derval Green and another skilful, fast medium operator, the 23 -year-old Marquinho Mindley. Those two ended up doing a lot of work in the first Barbados innings. But without a third fast bowling option — Rovman Powell is just military medium — the Scorpions seemed embarrassingly shorthanded.

The situation cried out for someone with genuine pace.

Instead, Jamaica sent three specialist spinners to Barbados: captain and champion left-armer Nikita Miller, wrist spinner Damion Jacobs and a second left-arm spinner Christopher Lamont. Let’s not forget John Campbell’s off spin, Fabian Allen’s left-arm spin and Andre McCarthy’s off spin.

Puzzlingly, Jacobs did not play in Barbados, though he had a twelve-wicket match haul as Jamaica triumphed over the Leeward Islands Hurricanes on a dry, spin-friendly pitch at Sabina Park, the previous week. Lamont was preferred to him. Believe it or not, Lamont shared the new ball with Green on the first morning in Barbados.

It’s testament to the conditions in Barbados, that Miller, who ran through all comers at Sabina, claimed 2-126 in 52.2 overs.

I watched some of that Barbados/Jamaica game on Cricket West Indies website’s Match Centre and was extremely annoyed. I thought the selectors and team management did an injustice to Jamaica’s cricket.

If you think I have a bias towards extreme pace, you are right. Whatever else may happen in West Indies cricket, I strongly believe the regional team will need express fast bowlers to start winning cricket matches on a consistent basis. And like the former Australian batsman Justin Langer who was in the Caribbean as a coach with the CPL a couple of seasons ago, I see good, promising fast bowlers. I think they just need sustained support to get to the next level.

And I wholeheartedly welcomed the call by Browne at the start of the four-day season for fast bowlers to come forward.

All of which brings me to this vexed issue of pitches. Why can’t the territorial boards within West Indies cricket arrive at some kind of consensus that will ensure pitches with more pace and bounce? In New Zealand recently, West Indian batsmen found themselves unable to deal with short stuff aimed at their upper body — from fast medium bowlers on bouncy pitches. Obviously, if our batsmen are to hone their technique to deal with that line of attack they need to be prepared in domestic cricket.

However, if Caribbean first -class cricket continues to be played on dry, sluggish pitches such as we have seen at Sabina in the 2017/18 season, cricket won’t progress. On such pitches exciting fast bowlers such as Leveridge and Thomas are left frustrated and demotivated; a delightful stroke-playing batsman such as Brandon King ends up having to become a boring grafter in order to make runs. And ordinary spinners become destroyers, only to be cruelly found out at the highest level against the world’s best batsmen, on pitches where the ball doesn’t grip and turn from the first morning.

Cricket West Indies would do well to return to an initiative in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which saw cash prizes going to the ground staff adjudged to have prepared the fairest cricket pitches for the regional first class season. That initiative was a direct outgrowth of the abandonment of a Sabina Test in 1998 because the pitch was deemed dangerous and unsuitable for Test cricket. To my recollection, that pitch competition had very positive results. I never understood why it was scrapped.