Vin­ode Mam­chan

Long serv­ing West In­dies women's crick­et coach Sher­win Camp­bell, con­spic­u­ous­ly ab­sent from the team cur­rent­ly cam­paign­ing in round three of the ICC Women's Cham­pi­onship in Sri Lan­ka, has been sacked by the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB)

Camp­bell who was in­stru­men­tal in the rise of the West In­dies women in­to the top half of the in­ter­na­tion­al women's rank­ings over the last sev­en years, has been re­placed by fel­low Bar­ba­di­an Vas­bert Drakes, the for­mer West In­dies all­rounder.

Camp­bell al­leged­ly sent a pri­vate mes­sage via What­sapp to a se­nior mem­ber of the team in which an­oth­er se­nior play­er was the sub­ject of much dis­cus­sion. How­ev­er, the dis­cus­sion was re­layed to a mem­ber of the WICB who found the coach's mes­sage and dis­cus­sion to be in poor taste.

A source close to the sit­u­a­tion said Camp­bell nev­er in­tend­ed the mes­sage to go past the per­son to whom it was sent.

"Sher­win was hav­ing what he thought was a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion with some­one and shared his views about a se­nior mem­ber of the team and the per­son sent the mes­sage to the WICB of­fi­cial. The mes­sage was then tak­en to the WICB and af­ter in­ves­ti­gat­ing they thought that it would not be wise to have Camp­bell coach the team at this point in time."

Un­der Camp­bell's reign, the West In­dies be­came one of the top women's team and re­ceived lots of at­ten­tion on the world stage.

He en­joyed a good re­la­tion­ship with the WICB and the play­ers, but ac­cord­ing to the source af­ter sev­en years, there was def­i­nite­ly go­ing to be is­sues that would crop up. "How­ev­er, this one was prob­a­bly not dealt with in the best man­ner by Camp­bell and he paid the ul­ti­mate price."

Camp­bell played 52 Tests, scored 2,882 runs at an av­er­age of 32.38 and a best of 208. He al­so fea­tured in 90 ODIs, scor­ing 2283 runs at an av­er­age of 26.24 and a best of 105.

Drakes who has tak­en over has the ex­pe­ri­ence of work­ing with the Bar­ba­di­an women's team and has been tout­ed as a good coach by his peers. His first as­sign­ment is the ICC Women's Cham­pi­onship which is a mul­ti-year, bi­lat­er­al com­pe­ti­tion be­tween the top eight in­ter­na­tion­al women's sides that will lead to qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 2017 ICC Women's World Cup to be host­ed by the Eng­land & Wales Crick­et Board.

The West In­dies women, mean­time, will be match­ing skills with Sri Lan­ka in a se­ries of four match­es, start­ing to­day with the last three, count­ing as qual­i­fiers for the ICC Women's World Cup 2017.