BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Crick­et West In­dies di­rec­tors, Enoch Lewis and Conde Ri­ley, have sparred pub­licly over the re­cent choice of Richard Py­bus for se­nior men’s head coach, fur­ther in­creas­ing the ran­cour sur­round­ing the Eng­lish­man’s ap­point­ment less than two weeks be­fore the open­ing Test against Eng­land.

Lewis has been high­ly crit­i­cal of Py­bus’s se­lec­tion and wrote to CWI last month lam­bast­ing the way the se­lec­tion process was car­ried out, while al­so ac­cus­ing pres­i­dent Dave Cameron of “hand-pick­ing” Py­bus for the job.

How­ev­er, Ri­ley, the Bar­ba­dos Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, de­fend­ed Py­bus’s ap­point­ment, rub­bish­ing Lewis’s claims and con­tend­ing that CWI board had sanc­tioned the move.

“On the ninth of De­cem­ber, this whole mat­ter was ven­ti­lat­ed [at a board meet­ing in Trinidad]. It was put to the vote,” Ri­ley said dur­ing a stormy ex­change with Lewis on the pop­u­lar crick­et ra­dio show, Ma­son and Guest, broad­cast on the Star­com Net­work here.

“I do not know what more due process should be fol­lowed when a full board, in­clud­ing the 12 di­rec­tors from the six ter­ri­to­ries – along with the two in­de­pen­dent di­rec­tors – vot­ed. The pres­i­dent had one vote.”

He con­tin­ued: “The Board ven­ti­lat­ed a whole thing as to who should be the in­ter­im coach. There was a vote; the vote was 12-4, and that was how Mr Py­bus be­came the in­ter­im coach."

“I am read­ing all of this thing about ‘due process’. It was a stop-gap thing so we could go back and as chair­man of the HR com­mit­tee, I can tell you that we sat down and dis­cussed a whole lot of things in terms of suc­ces­sion plan­ning, look­ing at our fran­chise crick­et, and we felt that the next head coach would be a West In­di­an once they ap­plied for the job."

“Once the re­gion­al fran­chise coach­es ap­plied, all of them would be in­ter­viewed and giv­en a fair chance. If you hand­pick any one of them and the oth­er peo­ple who have not been coach­es but are for­mer Test play­ers, this same dis­cus­sion would be tak­ing place – how did you ar­rive at it?”

How­ev­er, Ri­ley’s as­ser­tion was re­ject­ed by Lewis, who said the is­sue lay in the fact that the board, along with di­rec­tor of crick­et, Jim­my Adams, and the CWI crick­et com­mit­tee, had been ex­clud­ed from the re­cruit­ment of Py­bus.

Re­it­er­at­ing what he stat­ed in his frank let­ter of com­plaint to CWI, Lewis said af­ter Cameron had de­ter­mined that ne­go­ti­a­tions with the board-ap­proved can­di­date Nic Pothas, had bro­ken down, the Ja­maican ad­min­is­tra­tor had head-hunt­ed Py­bus, ne­go­ti­at­ed and con­clud­ed a deal in­clud­ing salary, with­out any pri­or au­tho­ri­sa­tion from the CWI board.

“We were go­ing to hire some­body from the ex­ist­ing coach­ing staff. That was ap­proved by the board,” Lewis said, ac­cus­ing Ri­ley of “try­ing to mis­lead the pub­lic”.

“We made no de­ci­sion out­side of that to con­tact any­body else. The board made no de­ci­sion. If that didn’t work out, what should hap­pen is that mat­ter should come back to the board, and the board should then de­ter­mine a process as to how we’re go­ing to go for­ward. That did not take place.

“What hap­pened when the so-called break­down of ne­go­ti­a­tions took place, was that a sin­gle per­son reached out, con­tact­ed one per­son in this whole world. Not on­ly con­tact­ed the per­son but ne­go­ti­at­ed with the per­son, in­clud­ing a salary and came back to the board and said ‘I have done this’. I am say­ing this is not due process.”

He added: “That is in­de­fen­si­ble. You can­not de­fend that. Trust pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dure – that’s all the Lee­ward Is­lands Crick­et Board is say­ing.”

How­ev­er, Ri­ley hint­ed that Lewis was mere­ly frus­trat­ed he had not got­ten his way at the De­cem­ber meet­ing, and this had prompt­ed his pub­lic out­cry.

“Be­cause you put some­thing on the ta­ble and do not win, you can­not say there was no due process when a whole board vot­ed,” an an­noyed Ri­ley said.

“I’m get­ting tired and sick of this non­sense. What I’m aghast about is [for Lewis] to come out and write this let­ter.”

In the let­ter, Lewis had called for Py­bus’s ap­point­ment to be re­scind­ed, a re­quest which was sub­se­quent­ly ig­nored by CWI.

(CMC)