Vin­ode Mam­chan

Just days af­ter the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) changed the re­gion­al se­lec­tion pan­el, they con­tin­ued their house clean­ing yes­ter­day by re­mov­ing Ot­tis Gib­son as coach of the re­gion­al side.

The for­mer all-rounder, who played two Tests and 15 One-Day in­ter­na­tion­als for the Windies, served Eng­land as bowl­ing coach from late 2007 un­til he came back home to take charge of the re­gion­al unit in Feb­ru­ary 2010.

In­for­ma­tion reach­ing the T&T Guardian is that he was like­ly to be re­placed by for the for­mer South Africa and Aus­tralia coach Mick­ey Arthur. The South African, Arthur re­cent­ly fin­ished his du­ties with the Ja­maica Tallawahs in the Li­ma­col Caribbean Pre­mier League T20 tour­na­ment.

WICB Crick­et op­er­a­tions di­rec­tor Richard Py­bus met with Gib­son af­ter a string of poor per­for­mances from the re­gion­al side. The two did not see eye to eye on many mat­ters and in the end the WICB di­rec­tors were made aware of the feel­ings of both Py­bus and Gib­son.

The di­rec­tors held a tele­con­fer­ence over the week­end and a de­ci­sion was made to ter­mi­nate the ser­vices of Gib­son and the hunt was then on for a new coach. With the West In­dies due to play Bangladesh from to­mor­row in Grena­da in a three-match, two-Test and lone T20 se­ries, a coach was need­ed im­me­di­ate­ly and Py­bus met with Arthur at the Hy­att Re­gency in St Kitts.

It is un­der­stood that al­though all terms have not been worked out, Arthur will take charge for the Bangladesh se­ries. Gib­son's con­tract was not up for re­new­al, since he re­newed his con­tract last year. It was for a pe­ri­od of three years and due to end in Feb­ru­ary 2016.

At the time of re­new­ing the con­tract, WICB chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Michael Muir­head said: "Ot­tis has added sig­nif­i­cant val­ue to the de­vel­op­ment of the West In­dies team dur­ing his tenure and we are de­light­ed to have se­cured his ser­vices for an­oth­er three years." "Most no­tably is that he led the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a sys­tem of pro­fes­sion­al­ism with­in the team unit and curbed the neg­a­tive re­sults, which we were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing with some fre­quen­cy. There have al­so been clear suc­cess­es un­der his stew­ard­ship from 2010 to date. These in­clude, most no­tably, hav­ing coached the team to the World Twen­ty20 ti­tle, the team show­ing con­sis­tent im­prove­ments in the oth­er for­mats, the rein­te­gra­tion of play­ers in­to the team unit and the achieve­ment of the set goals as out­lined in the WICB Strate­gic Plan 2011-2016," Muir­head said.

The West In­dies con­tin­ue to strug­gle in the Test and ODI for­mats and this has prompt­ed many changes un­der new pres­i­dent Dave Cameron.

Dar­ren Sam­my was re­moved as ODI cap­tain and re­placed by Dwayne Bra­vo, while the St Lu­cian was al­so re­placed as Test cap­tain by De­nesh Ramdin. Sam­my has held on to his post as T20 cap­tain. Re­cent­ly the changes con­tin­ued with for­mer Test cap­tain Clive Lloyd re­plac­ing Clyde Butts as chief se­lec­tor, while El­dine Bap­tiste and Court­ney Walsh were al­so made se­lec­tors. Mak­ing way for them was Robert Haynes, while Court­ney Browne was been sent to deal with youth se­lec­tion and women's crick­et