For­mer West In­dies all-rounder Phillip Sim­mons was ho­n­oured on Thurs­day by his al­ma mater Holy Cross Col­lege for his con­tri­bu­tions to crick­et lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Sim­mons, who is cur­rent­ly the head coach of the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers in the on­go­ing Caribbean Pre­mier League, played 26 Tests for the West In­dies with a bat­ting av­er­age of 22.26.

The school had one of their hous­es named in Sim­mons' ho­n­our. Sim­mons said it's one of the biggest ho­n­ours he had. “To know that it's com­ing from some­thing close to my heart makes it even big­ger.”

Dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny which was put to­geth­er by the prin­ci­pal Gary Ribeiro, vice prin­ci­pal Anand Pat­tron and past pupils Neil Wal­cott and Efun­de­ji Olaosedikhan (for­mer­ly Mau­rice Layne), the stu­dents of the col­lege high­light­ed his ca­reer, in­clud­ing his fig­ures of 10 overs, eight maid­ens, and four wick­ets for three runs in a one-day in­ter­na­tion­al in Aus­tralia against Pak­istan in a Ben­son and Hedges World Se­ries match in the 1992-1993 sea­son.

Sim­mons, a na­tive of Ari­ma, took the spot­light away from es­tab­lished and leg­endary fast-bowl­ing team­mates Sir Curt­ly Am­brose, Court­ney Walsh and Ian Bish­op.

The for­mer West In­dies coach, who led the Caribbean team to the 2016 T20 World Cup, had some en­cour­ag­ing words for those gath­ered.

“It's one of the things that as a coach es­pe­cial­ly,” Sim­mons said, “I push play­ers to make sure that every time you come back to me when I haven't seen you for a while, there's progress, you've im­proved. And I think that in life that's some­thing that we have to make sure that we're do­ing. As stu­dents, you don't want to be stuck in form one. When you move up to form two, things have to be bet­ter.”

Sim­mons, a grad­u­ate of the class of 1979, played 143 One Day In­ter­na­tion­als for the re­gion­al team gar­nered 3675 runs at an av­er­age of 28.93 and scored five hun­dreds dur­ing his ca­reer. While bat­ting was his main role in the team, he al­so got 83 wick­ets at an av­er­age of 34.64 with an econ­o­my rate of 4.44 with his right arm medi­um pace.

Sim­mons him­self had praise for two teach­ers that would have im­pact­ed him as a stu­dent. He paid trib­ute to Bernard Tap­pin, who was de­scribed as one of the best teach­ers that he had. “But I re­mem­ber one term af­ter putting that foot out and trip­ping some­one. For the rest of the term, every time Mr Bernard Tap­pin walks in­to the class. I had to walk out. I had to be out of his class. He wouldn't have me in the class, but as we go on and you think back at these things, you learn that it was all for my ben­e­fit.”

Sim­mons al­so had praise for an­oth­er teacher, Broth­er Navis (Aubert Ge­of­fry), who had a hand in his crick­et de­vel­op­ment. “One of the things I must men­tion is how much it hurt when Broth­er Navis passed,” Sim­mons ad­mit­ted, “be­cause I think this col­lege and I don't usu­al­ly say that things owe peo­ple, be­cause he would have done it with­out any in­cli­na­tion of re­pay­ment. But the col­lege owes a lot to Broth­er Navis be­cause he spent a lot of time here and this was his ba­by.”

Sim­mons, 60, shared how much time and ef­fort his for­mer teacher put in­to the school’s crick­et team and by ex­ten­sion his crick­et de­vel­op­ment and ear­ly ca­reer. “He made sure that from play­ers on the field to the peo­ple look­ing, every­thing, he would make sure that things were right.

"For Holy Cross Col­lege, when we rep­re­sent­ed, he made sure that we had all the things we need­ed to make Holy Cross proud on the field any­where.”

The for­mer right-hand­ed pow­er hit­ter re­called the time the team was able to give back to Broth­er Navis with the per­for­mances on the field. “I re­mem­ber one of his proud­est mo­ments is when we won. I think it was the Un­der-14 team. We went down to the three big col­leges in Port-of-Spain and we beat them. In the fi­nal against Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege. We mur­dered them be­cause it was a case that we were so much bet­ter than them and I think that was one of his proud­est mo­ments.”

In clos­ing, the for­mer Ire­land coach of­fered to as­sist the school, say­ing: “I will put it out there to the prin­ci­pal that if I'm here and there is time for some chat with any one of the sports team or any one of the teams be­cause I love the team as­pect of things.”