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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Sim­mons ready to coach Windies again

Bravo, Pollard blacklisted

by

Keith Clement
2306 days ago
20190401
Former West Indies coach Phil Simmons, left,  newly elected West Indies president Ricky Skerritt and vice president Dr Kishore Shallow in Antigua last week.

Former West Indies coach Phil Simmons, left, newly elected West Indies president Ricky Skerritt and vice president Dr Kishore Shallow in Antigua last week.

For­mer West In­dies Crick­et Coach Phil Sim­mons will be avail­able to coach the West In­dies team again if need­ed af­ter Ju­ly 15th, 2019. Speak­ing from over­seas dur­ing the Is­ports ra­dio pro­gramme on i95.5fm with host An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste on Sat­ur­day night, Sim­mons stat­ed, "At the mo­ment I am con­tract­ed to Afghanistan and there can be no talk about West In­dies crick­et. I'm fo­cused on Afghanistan and how we get ready for the Crick­et World Cup start­ing in May.”

He con­tin­ued, “But af­ter the Fi­nals on Ju­ly 15th, my con­tract is up with Afghanistan, but no­body knows the fu­ture, but my whole aim now is to win the World Cup so af­ter 15th Ju­ly, let us see what hap­pens. But every­one who knows me un­der­stands how much I love the re­gion and how hard it has been for me over the last three years deal­ing with that mat­ter. I am just glad it is over and my name has been cleared. Most im­por­tant­ly, the apol­o­gy from the new Pres­i­dent Ricky Sker­ritt goes a long way in clear­ing up a lot of the talk un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. I be­lieve that this shows that this new team is about the in­ter­est of crick­et and not about them­selves.”

Sim­mons, who made his Test de­but in 1988 and played 26 Test match­es for the West In­dies, spoke about the many ills he ex­pe­ri­enced as West In­dies coach and de­spite his suc­cess with the team win­ning the ICC World T20 fi­nal on April 3rd, 2016, re­called a num­ber of sit­u­a­tions he had to en­dure.

He said, “I re­mem­ber the for­mer pres­i­dent telling me that we could not pick cer­tain play­ers (named called Dwayne Bra­vo and Ke­iron Pol­lard) be­cause they passed him straight and did not say any­thing, how they had no man­ners, team se­lec­tion was just too per­son­al. In fact, he said un­less they play for Trinidad and To­ba­go, they should not play for the West In­dies. This was al­so echoed at the se­lec­tor's meet­ings.”

“In fact, un­der Court­ney Browne, team se­lec­tion processed was changed where­by he made all the fi­nal de­ci­sions on the com­po­si­tion of the team and said that is how it was. It did not mat­ter the cap­tain or the coach ideas. The im­pres­sion giv­en was that this was a new di­rec­tive from on top and the team was named by him and you had no choice,” stat­ed Sim­mons who ex­celled at Zim­bab­we, then Ire­land with re­mark­able suc­cess and last year he led Afghanistan to vic­to­ry in the World Cup qual­i­fi­er and in­flict­ing a fi­nal match de­feat against the West In­dies, since leav­ing the West In­dies in con­tro­ver­sial fash­ion as coach.

Sim­mons, a for­mer crick­et­ing all-rounder, ex­plained that he was sur­prised and hurt by two re­cent de­ci­sions which hev re­called. He said, "Dur­ing my time, four years ago, I had a 45 minute ar­gu­ment with Browne over the se­lec­tion of Chris Gayle, with Browne say­ing he (Gayle) was too old and should not be se­lect­ed and at the time. I said that de­spite his back con­cerns he was more than good enough, now fast for­ward and Chris Gayle was called back to as­sist the West In­dies to qual­i­fy for the World Cup. Then, four years ago when Richard Py­bus was the Di­rec­tor of coach­ing, said to me that the West In­dies play­ers in the IPL must re­turn home for a 10 day camp and that was the way it had to be, and I said to him the play­ers had con­tracts and got No Ob­jec­tion cer­tifi­cates, but now Py­bus is the coach and there is no rule like that for the play­ers in the IPL, they can play out their terms and that is how it should be all the time. It was tough, but now I feel I am in a bet­ter place en­joy­ing the crick­et and just hav­ing fun."

Sim­mons, who played 143 ODIs af­ter his de­but in 1987, be­lieves that a full-strength West In­dies team will have to be among the favourites to win the World Cup,” If the best West In­dies play­ers are se­lect­ed, then the West In­dies have to be among the favourites to win.

He said, "Dwayne Bra­vo I be­lieve he is in a good space now en­joy­ing his crick­et and it is up to him to de­cide to come back, but I know he is hap­py and en­joy­ing his crick­et. Giv­en all that has hap­pened in West In­dies crick­et and the com­ments by Mar­lon Samuels on Sports­max, I hope that the re­ports on West In­dies crick­et gov­er­nance are put to prop­er use this time around, and there is a prop­er dis­cus­sion with a view to en­sur­ing we get it right for the sake of West In­dies crick­et.”

Sim­mons, who start­ed his first-class ca­reer in 1983, said he was sur­prised last Sun­day when he heard the news that Dave Cameron had lost. "I was very hap­py for all of those that love West In­dies Crick­et. How many per­sons know who is in charge of the Eng­land Crick­et Board and how many Pres­i­dents are on tele­vi­sion or busy tweet­ing. West In­dies crick­et can look for­ward to Ricky Sker­ritt and Dr Shal­low, and that is the pos­i­tive go­ing for­ward."


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