Once again, the newly elected West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has made their first decision in the new term, a position which seemed to have been filled previously with persons who have not quite improved the quality of our game during their tenure.
When Ottis Gibson was chosen, I felt that his experience gained, when he was the bowling coach for the England team, was definitely preceded by coaching courses, which is the prerequisite for selection into these positions.
Being a fine fast bowler during his stint with the West Indies as a player, I figured that his ability to perform, plus his coaching education may well be the recipe for success.
The difficult assessment of coach mentality, communication skills, relay of technical information and correction of player errors, should have been tested before the final choice was made. I believe that Ottis failed in those departments.
However, the choice of Curtly Ambrose to fill the gap, could have been done without much evidence, other than the strength of his desire to achieve his goals and the strong motivational approach, some of which we were able to detect from his body language when he addressed his players prior to the start of a game.
Maybe we should learn to understand that the process towards the development of any sport does not necessarily mean getting a good coach to work with our national or international teams.
Admittedly, the seat offered to Phil Simmons is one which is filled with many secret areas of content which may have us all saying in the near future that the former West Indian opening batsmen is not getting the job done.
I believe that Phil has the ability to cure some of the ills among our players in the same way that he had done to the Irish, whose limited talent history in the game is a long way behind the West Indies or any of the major countries.
But my reservations lie with the mentality and individualistic approach by West Indians who seem not to respond to the corrective measures that would take their batting, bowling and fielding to another level.
Bear this in mind, Phil's job is mainly to guide the methods of approach of all the players, whose natural talent, when performed in isolation, will find little success unless the methodology can be brought to the game day performances.
Across the board, our cricketers in this era lack the intelligence that can make them better players. They have already formed their own opinions regarding the type of batting, bowling or even fielding that they should adopt, despite the fact that Phil's input could well improve the quality of their game.
I honestly believe the present crop of selected players, except a few young ones like Kraigg Braithwaithe, Jonathan Carter, Johnson Charles, and Darren Bravo with the batting, and Jason Holder, Shannon Gabriel, and a few other fast bowlers, cannot go forward in the quality of their performances.
These guys are too far advanced in their shortcomings in order to listen to the sound advice which Phil may bring to their technique or even their tactical adjustment in their effort to bring a better cricket result to their game.
This is not unusual in the Caribbean. Our players are not good listeners to advice and they prefer to get dismissed in almost the same way most times, or continue to bowl deliveries which imply no intended strategy to dismiss the opposition.
The standard of our cricket needs to have the coach educators, whose training methods are based upon teaching youngsters from as early as fifteen years upwards.
Many of today's potentially good players are often developing their game without making necessary corrections to their basic mistakes.
The experienced coaches who can break their skill into components, correct these defective moves individually, then put them together again in order to nurture a technically sound player, will produce the super stars of tomorrow.
Obviously the WICB personnel does not understand the importance of bringing the best coaches to the youth programmes and plan for about five or six years to see the natural talent of the youth players mushroom into the better twenty two year old, one with solid match preparations with bat and ball, in terms of planning innings, bowling methodically, with good line and length, variation of speed, spin, and direction.
What I am saying is that Phil Simmons will do the best he can to the present players, but they are far too advanced in their old habits.
His main strength will be the motivation which he had taken to Ireland for many years and have turned mediocrity into just bordering the final eight stage of world cricket, but this all depends on the response which he gets from the present players who all believe that their pattern is already working for them.
I wish you luck Phil Simmons, but history with our athletes have shown that they only lend an ear to unfamiliar voices. Your task is a tough one, but somehow, I have the feeling that you may get much more out of them than your predecessors.
Like the Brazilian Sports coaches favourite remark: "The fans only accept victory. Anything else is failure."