Col­in EH Croft

The full reign of West In­dies head coach Philip Ve­r­ant Sim­mons starts in re­al earnest next month with the West In­dies tour to Sri Lan­ka, fol­lowed lat­er by an­oth­er to still wound­ed Aus­tralia which had been so dum­found­ed and dis­com­bob­u­lat­ed by Eng­land re­cent­ly.Re­cent­ly, Sri Lan­ka has held its own well against In­dia, an­oth­er of the "Big Three". Aus­tralia, with re­tire­ments and re­fur­bish­ments af­ter em­bar­rass­ments in Eng­land, will want to show that its last Eng­lish tour was just a sour blip.

The big WI ques­tion would be to as­cer­tain if the WI head coach po­si­tion is in­deed the poi­soned chal­ice as has been sug­gest­ed by many in the past, some even lament­ing that "WI crick­eters are un-coach­able." That sim­ply can­not be true.

WI's team to Sri Lan­ka has been named, the most ob­vi­ous change and mas­sive sur­prise be­ing that re­cent cap­tain De­nesh Ramdin has been de­mot­ed to be­ing just play­er, wick­et-keep­er and tourist, while Ja­son Hold­er, just­ly, with vis­ages of WI's fu­ture, has been el­e­vat­ed to Test cap­tain.

Vet­er­an bats­man Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul has al­so just­ly been omit­ted, as has, some­what un­luck­i­ly, left-arm spin­ner Veerasam­my Per­maul. Their Guyanese coun­ter­part, right-arm leg-spin­ner Dav­en­dra Bishoo got the nod. New­com­er, Bar­ba­dos' Jomel War­ri­can, is pre­ferred to Per­maul to pro­vide con­trast­ing left-arm or­tho­doxy, these se­lec­tions be­ing gam­bles worth tak­ing right now.

As head of WI dress­ing rooms for the first time, Sim­mons would have re­cent­ly seen how his charges per­formed while play­ing Eng­land to a 1-1 Test se­ries tie and a 2-0 drub­bing by Aus­tralia. He must know by now how he plans to bring out his play­ers' best en­deav­ours.

Sim­mons must al­so ac­knowl­edge that his job will not be easy and that all hope­ful WI sup­port­ers at home or in the di­as­po­ra would be view­ing, re­view­ing, ques­tion­ing his every move, se­lec­tion, in­jec­tion and over­all man and match man­age­ment skills.

But "Sim­mo" is no­body's fool. He is def­i­nite­ly, maybe unique­ly, in the right place at the right time, with his vast play­ing ex­pe­ri­ences for WI and oth­er en­ti­ties in­clud­ing T&T and Leices­ter­shire in UK, and his high­ly suc­cess­ful coach­ing stints in Zim­bab­we and es­pe­cial­ly Ire­land. As re­gards the lat­ter, he might even be con­sid­ered "St Philip"!

Phil's biggest ob­sta­cle would not be his ac­tu­al in­put, but as to whether his charges would be able to ful­ly com­pre­hend his stat­ed ob­jec­tives, thus bring­ing their de­ter­mi­na­tion and abil­i­ties on-line to be ful­ly test­ed, as­sim­i­lat­ed and ac­tioned by his di­rec­tives. That will not be easy.

The ju­ry is still out as to if last head coach Ot­tis Gib­son's abil­i­ties al­lowed for his play­ers to be the best that they could have been. Some­times joints and patch­es just do not match. Since re­turn­ing to the Eng­lish fold as bowl­ing coach, a po­si­tion he had held pre­vi­ous­ly with spec­tac­u­lar suc­cess­es, Gib­son's more re­cent dis­ci­ples, in­clud­ing very ex­pe­ri­enced bowlers Stu­art Broad and James An­der­son, who bowled out of their skins against Aus­tralia, have shone as nev­er be­fore to help beat the Aussies. Gib­son must be do­ing some­thing right there!

Be­fore Sim­mons, Gib­son was on­ly the most re­cent of a long line of coach­es who seemed in­ca­pable of en­sur­ing that WI not on­ly played well but won con­sis­tent­ly, even dom­i­nate. Since 1995, when WI lost its Test crown to Aus­tralia, WI has had many il­lus­tri­ous, sup­pos­ed­ly com­pe­tent per­son­nel in that head coach po­si­tion. Clive Lloyd, (Sir) Vi­vian Richards, Roger Harp­er, Gus Lo­gie, Ben­net King and John Dyson are just a few of many.

Yet, if any­thing, WI's fall has been trans­formed from be­ing just grad­ual to be­ing pre­cip­i­tous, al­most ver­ti­cal­ly down­wards. Some­thing has to change!

One must be­lieve and ex­pect that any­one who plays for WI teams wants to do well, if on­ly for per­son­al ag­gran­dize­ment. There­fore, it could have been that, over­all, WI play­ers could not com­pre­hend Gib­son's meth­ods or ex­e­cute his wish­es or both, as their col­lec­tive re­sults left very much to be de­sired, Gib­son be­ing con­sid­ered a dis­mal fail­ure over­all. Sim­mons has sev­er­al younger, bud­ding play­ers, oth­ers ex­pe­ri­enced but not as in­flu­en­tial with bat or ball to date as has been ex­pect­ed, and some old­er heads too to man­age.

That mix, com­bined with cor­rect amounts of con­fi­dence, de­ter­mi­na­tion, guile, plan­ning and ex­e­cu­tion, while max­imis­ing abil­i­ties, could cre­ate con­tin­u­ous win­ners for a re­gion starved of suc­cess, many hav­ing for­got­ten how it feels to rule the roost of any form of in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et.

Team vet­er­ans Jerome Tay­lor, Ke­mar Roach, Mar­lon Samuels, De­ven­dra Bishoo, De­nesh Ramdin and Dar­ren Bra­vo must pro­vide much need­ed lead­er­ship and uni­ver­sal sta­bil­i­ty. Young, ex­cit­ing, as­tute new cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er, Jer­maine Black­wood, Kraigg Brath­waite and Shan­non Gabriel have abil­i­ties to per­form well be­yond the call of du­ty, even if their ex­pe­ri­ences are still some­what lim­it­ed.

Shai Hope, Shane Dowrich, Car­los Brath­waite, Ra­jin­dra Chan­dri­ka and new­com­er Jomel War­ri­can must not on­ly learn and ab­sorb as much as they could, but al­so un­der­stand that they have re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of car­ry­ing the fu­ture of WI crick­et on their young, in­ex­pe­ri­enced shoul­ders.But still the cat­a­lyst for what­ev­er suc­cess WI may hope for in Sri Lan­ka, be­fore that lat­er tour of Aus­tralia, must be head coach Phil Sim­mons, whose am­bi­tions must now be en­hanced. En­joy!