Former captain and West Indies legend Sir Vivian Richards says the current pool of players are letting their fanbase down by putting self-interest ahead of team.

Richards is the only West Indies captain never to lose a Test series, and also a two-time ICC Cricket World Cup winner.

He says players are no longer aware of the historical significance of playing for the team and what they represent when they wear its colours. He says fans who have supported the team in spite of numerous challenging times deserve more.

“We have so many issues,” Sir Viv said during the Good Morning JoJo sports show on Antigua-based Observer Radio. “We would’ve had the pandemic. We need something to uplift us and there are times we look to our sportsmen and sportswomen to do that. Presently, the West Indies team is lacking where that’s concerned.”

Sir Viv says one of his main issues is that of players opting out of selection for West Indies series to instead play T20 franchise cricket, usually a more lucrative option, around the world. He says that Cricket West Indies (CWI) should be more proactive in response.

“It is something that I believe should have been organised long before,” he said. “It’s also alleged that you hear players sometimes saying ‘CWI knows my schedule’ and stuff like that. That’s not the way it should be. You should be telling CWI what your schedule is and see the best way to work around it if your heart and soul is in representing the West Indies at that particular level.

“But what I find is that there are some that want to go do what they like in terms of contracts they have with the various franchises. To come back and automatically get in when you have individuals who have been performing, and being around and not basically getting a look in because of these individuals being favourites of such, I think we should at least have found a way earlier to nullify that and have the guys who are fit to play, and not the guys who pick and choose when they feel like playing.”

Sir Viv shares the sentiments of former teammate Sir Andy Roberts, who recently questioned the fitness of players after their elimination from the qualifying stage of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup last month.

“When you have fragments [of the team] coming in here and there, sometimes guys come in unfit,” Sir Viv said. “That’s always been one of my biggest issues — individuals not fit enough and it is alleged that there are individuals on tour not taking fitness tests. That cannot work. It’s not supposed to work in any particular organisation. I don’t think it does work in any other organisation. When you can solve these problems, then you are on the road to helping to get the success.”

Sir Viv also described their performance last month as disgraceful.

“I’m really, really, really disappointed,” he said. “I honestly felt that they would have fought their way out of the qualifying stages to get themselves into the Super 12. It didn’t look good at all. One of the things that really caught my eye, when we won against Zimbabwe, the way in which we behaved, liked we had won the World Cup, I felt we should’ve just calmed it down a little bit. We got excited and it was a close call in the end. It’s like your team is down five zip and you score a goal and jump up and start pointing to your chest and all that — that’s wasting time. You should try and get the ball as quickly as you can to the centre circle to get another goal. I think Ricky Ponting (former Australia captain) put it as clearly as possible in terms of what he knows of the unit in itself. This is supposed to be our best opportunity for us to win something at the international level because this is a team that showed that sort of prospect. This is where I think we have geared ourselves that if we were gonna win anything and win it quickly, it would’ve been the T20 World Cup. Because of that, I’m very, very, very disappointed. I’m not sure why, but I am.”