For­mer West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) pres­i­dent Ken Gor­don has called on the Board to be mag­naminous and al­low sus­pend­ed coach Phil Sim­mons to be with the team on its cur­rent tour of Sri Lan­ka.

Ad­mit­ting that Sim­mons' sus­pen­sion was the right thing for the WICB to do, Gor­don said it would be a tremen­dous morale boost­er if Sim­mons was al­lowed to be with the team in a sup­port or ad­vi­so­ry ca­pac­i­ty. "We des­per­ate­ly need one."

Sim­mons re­cent­ly crit­i­cised the board for what he de­scribed as "in­ter­fer­ence from out­side" which led to the omis­sion of Dwayne Bra­vo and Kieron Pol­lard from the team on tour in Sri Lan­ka. He was sub­se­quent­ly sus­pend­ed.

Gor­don said Sim­mons' crit­i­cism has gained wide sup­port. "The events which fol­lowed are iron­ic for the board and its cur­rent pres­i­dent who have lost the re­spect of the crick­et­ing pub­lic, have in re­cent times failed to take ac­tion for in­dis­ci­plined be­hav­ior, from Chris Gayle on more than one oc­ca­sion, con­duct­ed it­self in an un­prin­ci­pled and dis­hon­est man­ner in its han­dling of the Pat­ter­son Re­port, demon­strat­ed its in­abil­i­ty to give re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship .... by pussy­foot­ing when firm and de­ci­sive ac­tion was re­quired against the West In­di­an team for walk­ing off the field in In­dia. And now.... this board sus­pends Sim­mons for speak­ing out of turn."

Gor­don con­tin­ued: "The re­al­ly ter­ri­ble irony about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion is that sus­pend­ing Sim­mons was the right thing to do. Dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion was re­quired in the cir­cum­stances."

He said Sim­mons' apol­o­gy spoke vol­umes about the man. "He now un­der­stands that as coach it was wrong to make such pub­lic crit­i­cism of the or­gan­i­sa­tion he has been em­ployed to rep­re­sent. His re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was to fight this in­ter­nal­ly or leave. You can­not have it both ways. With­out in­sist­ing on firm dis­ci­pline the coach would be free to crit­i­cise the board pub­licly, the cap­tain would feel free to crit­i­cise the coach and the play­ers would be equal­ly free to crit­i­cise the cap­tain. In oth­er words it would re­main a mat­ter of who can get away with what. There must be a regime of firm dis­ci­pline if the West In­dies team is to have any chance of turn­ing around its for­tunes. Late in the day as it comes the new ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer is now promis­ing that this will fol­low.

"The re-in­tro­duc­tion of Sim­mons as coach has been an in­vig­o­rat­ing de­vel­op­ment. A for­mer Test play­er, Phil is well re­spect­ed and liked on all sides; he is a good leader, knows the game and has come back to us with an im­pres­sive track record earned from his vir­tu­al trans­for­ma­tion of the Ire­land crick­et team.

"For­tu­nate­ly, too, the board now has a fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­deem it­self if it re­sponds ma­ture­ly and ac­cepts Phil Sim­mons' apol­o­gy. If they can be mag­naminous, even at this late stage, and make him a part of the Sri Lan­ka team."