BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Leg­endary for­mer West In­dies speed­ster, Michael Hold­ing, has urged Crick­et West In­dies not to dis­card out­stand­ing for­mer team­mate, Desmond Haynes, but to ab­sorb him in­to the coach­ing set­up of the men’s team.

Haynes, a mem­ber of the leg­endary West In­dies sides of the 1970s, 80s and ear­ly 90s, missed out on be­com­ing head coach of the re­gion­al side this week af­ter CWI ap­point­ed his for­mer open­ing part­ner, Phil Sim­mons.

How­ev­er, Hold­ing con­tend­ed that Haynes still had a valu­able role to play and said both CWI and Sim­mons need­ed to utilise his skills to en­hance the strug­gling Caribbean side’s de­vel­op­ment.

“I would hope that a lot of oth­er peo­ple that ap­plied for the job that they are qual­i­fied in some re­spect, es­pe­cial­ly those that made the short­list,” Hold­ing told the Line & Length crick­et pod­cast.

“So I would hope that they (CWI) wouldn’t just turn their backs and say ‘Phil Sim­mons is the coach; that’s it – the rest of you can just sit down and wait un­til some­thing else comes up’.

“I would hope that Phil Sim­mons would look at the peo­ple who al­so ap­plied and think to him­self ‘ok, I can use some of these peo­ple in my set­up. Let me try and get these peo­ple un­der my wing and help this West In­dies team’.”

He con­tin­ued: “Be­cause Desmond Haynes cer­tain­ly has good qual­i­fi­ca­tions as far as be­ing a bat­ting coach is con­cerned. He has done it over­seas … and I think Dessie knows enough about bat­ting and has helped young­sters in the past with their bat­ting, that a place could [be found for him].

“But again that’s up to [Crick­et West In­dies] and Phil Sim­mons how they want to go for­ward.”

(CMC)