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."