Vin­ode Mam­chan

De­spite send­ing a strong­ly word­ed apol­o­gy to the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) coach Phil Sim­mons has been sus­pend­ed and will miss the up­com­ing tour of Sri Lan­ka.

The WICB re­vealed yes­ter­day that they learned of the com­ments from head coach of the West In­dies team Phil Sim­mons in the print and elec­tron­ic me­dia which ap­pear to ques­tion the le­git­i­ma­cy of the se­lec­tion process of the One-day In­ter­na­tion­al squad for the Tour of Sri Lan­ka.

As a re­sult the man­age­ment of the WICB de­cid­ed to take ac­tion to sus­pend the head coach pend­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the is­sue.

In the mean­time, the man­age­ment has ad­vised the coach­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the head coach would pass to El­dine Bap­tiste, a mem­ber of the WICB se­lec­tion pan­el, un­til the mat­ter is cleared up. Bap­tiste was al­ready a mem­ber of the orig­i­nal tour par­ty to Sri Lan­ka as the "se­lec­tor-on-tour."

T&T Guardian in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed Sim­mons sent an apol­o­gy to the man­age­ment of the WICB and al­so the se­lec­tion pan­el which in­clud­ed chair­man Clive Lloyd, Court­ney Walsh, El­dine Bap­tiste and Court­ney Browne.

It un­der­stood that the Trinida­di­an men­tioned in the apol­o­gy he was sor­ry for the out­burst, as his ac­tions was a fit of mad­ness akin to a school­boy.

The T&T Guardian al­so un­der­stands that on the week­end CEO of the WICB, Michael Muir­head, held dis­cus­sions with crick­et op­er­a­tions man­ag­er Richard Py­bus and they de­cid­ed to sus­pend Sim­mons pend­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Sim­mons will have to wait to be called be­fore the WICB dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee head­ed by Bar­ba­di­an Jus­tice Adri­an Saun­ders, Jus­tice De­siree Bernard, Dr Lloyd Bar­nett, Desmond Haynes and Ver­lyn Faustin, the WICB cor­po­rate sec­re­tary.

At the heart of the mat­ter was the omis­sion of all-rounders Dwayne Bra­vo and Ke­iron Pol­lard from the West In­dies ODI team.

Sim­mons re­vealed that "in­ter­fer­ence from out­side" at a se­lec­tion meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 23 had kept all-rounders Bra­vo and Pol­lard out of the ODI side.

He said he, as coach, and chair­man of se­lec­tors Clive Lloyd had vot­ed for their in­clu­sion but were out­num­bered 3-2 de­spite Hold­er al­so want­i­ng Bra­vo and Pol­lard in the team.

"I think it's dis­ap­point­ing from the fact that I haven't the best 50-over ODI squad that we can se­lect in the Caribbean," Sim­mons had said at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the con­clu­sion of the West In­dies train­ing camp at the 3Ws Oval in Bridgetown.

"The chair­man, Mr Lloyd, he came and he gave an ex­cep­tion­al speech, say­ing that he thinks it is time they are back in the squad and he gave ex­cep­tion­al rea­sons for them be­ing back in the squad.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, when we went in­to the se­lec­tion (meet­ing) we lost it 3-2. Him and my­self, the cap­tain (Hold­er) doesn't have a vote in this, but the cap­tain al­so gave his views as to why they need­ed to be back."

Bra­vo and Pol­lard have not been con­sid­ered for ODI se­lec­tion since they were dropped for the se­ries in South Africa in Jan­u­ary this year and their omis­sion from the World Cup squad gen­er­at­ed plen­ty of de­bate re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

WEST IN­DIES SE­LEC­TION PAN­EL

Chair­man: Clive Lloyd.

Mem­bers: Court­ney Walsh,

Court­ney Browne, El­dine Bap­tiste and Phil Sim­mons (head coach).