Vin­ode Mam­chan

Well-known crick­et com­men­ta­tor Fazeer Mo­hammed has been banned from in­ter­view­ing any West In­dies play­er cur­rent­ly in Aus­tralia tak­ing part in the Sir Frank Wor­rell crick­et se­ries.

Mo­hammed made the trek from Trinidad to Aus­tralia to work as a ra­dio com­men­ta­tor for the Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (ABC) and has been com­men­tat­ing since the first Test in Ho­bart. He told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that he was banned af­ter he made com­ments about the team on a ra­dio talk show pri­or to the start of the sec­ond Test that is cur­rent­ly on in Mel­bourne.

Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed: "I got banned from in­ter­view­ing any­one in the squad."He added that coach Phil Sim­mons did not take light­ly to crit­i­cisms of the team's train­ing head­ing in­to the Test match.

"Sim­mons ap­par­ent­ly didn't like what I said about the team's train­ing ahead of this Test. I made the com­ments on An­drew Ma­son's show last Tues­day. Some­one ob­vi­ous­ly told him what I said and he didn't like it." Asked if he was con­tact­ed by Sim­mons, Mo­hammed said, "No, he hasn't spo­ken to me."

Mo­hammed con­tin­ued: "The in­for­ma­tion was passed on by Philip Spoon­er. Sim­mons spoke to the pro­duc­er of the Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (ABC) ra­dio com­men­tary, Adam White and told him that I am not to in­ter­view any mem­ber of the squad. This oc­curred at the end of the sec­ond day's play of the on­go­ing Test."

Mo­hammed found that Sim­mons' ac­tion was not nec­es­sary as it can bring no good to the squad.

"It is dis­ap­point­ing be­cause it doesn't re­al­ly achieve any­thing oth­er than bring un­nec­es­sary and un­want­ed neg­a­tive at­ten­tion to a squad that has al­ready been fac­ing se­vere crit­i­cism from the Aus­tralian me­dia," he said.The West In­dies team has per­formed poor­ly thus far in this se­ries and is trail­ing 0�1 and in deep trou­ble in the on­go­ing Test at Mel­bourne.

Since ar­riv­ing in Aus­tralia the team has been put un­der the gun on and off the field and skip­per Ja­son Hold­er has been the cen­tre of at­tacks.On­ly yes­ter­day, for­mer Aus­tralian great ?? said that the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) made a grave er­ror in putting the young play­er in charge of the Test squad, due to his in­ex­pe­ri­ence in the role.