Vin­ode Mam­chan

West In­dies crick­et con­tin­ues to be em­broiled in con­tro­ver­sy and al­though there have been some pos­i­tives along the way, the neg­a­tives have far out­weighed them.

The lat­est blow to West In­dies crick­et is the bat­tle with coach Phil Sim­mons. Just months in­to the job, the Trinida­di­an has been sus­pend­ed be­cause of pub­lic com­ments he made con­cern­ing the omis­sion of all­rounders Dwayne Bra­vo and Kieron Pol­lard. Sim­mons, speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence in Bar­ba­dos, said that the con­tin­ued omis­sion of Pol­lard and Bra­vo had to do with "out­side in­ter­fer­ence." He was prompt­ly sus­pend­ed and re­placed by El­dine Bap­tiste as coach for the cur­rent tour of Sri Lan­ka.

Let me say first up, I think that the pub­lic out­burst by Sim­mons was out of or­der and I have no prob­lems with the for­mer Ire­land coach be­ing called be­fore a hu­man re­source com­mit­tee.

How­ev­er, I think that sus­pend­ing him was the wrong choice. The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) could have writ­ten to him and in­formed him that his com­ments in their opin­ion was out of line and that they could have met with him af­ter the Sri Lankan tour to dis­cuss his con­cerns.

If at that point they thought that his ex­pla­na­tion was not good enough and his com­ments caused ir­repara­ble dam­age, then they could have gone the route of send­ing him to the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee.

Re­mov­ing him now at this crit­i­cal junc­ture is not go­ing to do any­thing to take this team for­ward. In fact in my hum­ble view, I think that the team's morale has al­ready been af­fect­ed and this tour to Sri Lan­ka is go­ing to be very dif­fi­cult in­deed.

Chair­man of se­lec­tors Clive Lloyd said that Sim­mons had brought uni­ty and to­geth­er­ness in the team set up. Now we have a sit­u­a­tion where in­ter­im coach Bap­tiste who is al­so a se­lec­tor, hav­ing to deal with the two play­ers Bra­vo and Pol­lard whom he did not sup­port in terms of get­ting back in­to the ODI team. This is go­ing to be a dif­fi­cult po­si­tion for him and he may well find it very tough to get the play­ers to gel to­geth­er. This is West In­dies crick­et and one wish­es him well in this new role for the Sri Lankan tour.

I have no­ticed that Bap­tiste has been named coach for the en­tire tour, which ends in mid-No­vem­ber. What is puz­zling is that the WICB sent out a state­ment that Sim­mons will have to face an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. My in­for­ma­tion is that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion will be car­ried out by the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of the WICB, Michael Muir­head and a hu­man re­source com­mit­tee. What if they don't con­tin­ue his sus­pen­sion, then do we re­place Bap­tiste with Sim­mons mid­way dur­ing the tour, or is the WICB send­ing a mes­sage that he may not come back?

The ac­cu­sa­tions made by Sim­mons against three of the se­lec­tors (Court­ney Browne, Court­ney Walsh and Bap­tiste) is a se­ri­ous one be­cause what he is ac­tu­al­ly al­leg­ing is that the trio did not act in­de­pen­dent­ly. This could cause tremen­dous dis­com­fort amongst the se­lec­tion pan­el and in mov­ing for­ward the mat­ter of trust will take cen­tre stage.

Sim­mons has come out as a big man and apol­o­gised for his com­ments but I am afraid it will take more than that to heal this wound. It would take time for the three se­lec­tors to come around, whether the WICB wants to give Sim­mons that time, is yet to be seen.

Then there is the oth­er side of the coin, where if Sim­mons can sub­stan­ti­ate his claims of "out­side in­ter­fer­ence" then the mat­ter could take a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent turn. Sim­mons may still end up in front of a dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee but his breach may at­tract a not too harsh penal­ty. What­ev­er comes out of this now, is go­ing to be of great in­ter­est be­cause the WICB would be set­ting a prece­dent con­cern­ing pub­lic out­bursts from of­fi­cials and play­ers.

If Sim­mons can prove "out­side in­ter­fer­ence" then who­ev­er is called would then have to an­swer and the sit­u­a­tion could be the oth­er way around.

The next few weeks is go­ing to be very in­ter­est­ing in West In­dies crick­et and I am sure that the crick­et­ing world is look­ing on ea­ger­ly for Caribbean en­ter­tain­ment.

Let's hope that good sense pre­vails in all quar­ters and West In­dies crick­et can learn from the mis­takes and fi­nal­ly move in the di­rec­tion we would all like to see.