Third vice-pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) Patrick Ram­per­sad has called for an im­me­di­ate en­quiry in­to al­le­ga­tions re­cent­ly made by sus­pend­ed coach of the West In­dies team Phil Sim­mons, and plans to raise his con­cerns with TTCB mem­bers at an ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing to­day.

On­ly six months in­to the job, Sim­mons was sus­pend­ed by the WICB on Mon­day, two days af­ter his out­burst in the me­dia in which he al­leged "out­side in­ter­fer­ence" in the se­lec­tion of the team to tour Sri Lan­ka.

Ram­per­sad plans to place the is­sue high on to­day's meet­ing agen­da of the of the TTCB which is head­ed by Az­im Basarath, who to­geth­er with Bal­dath Ma­habir are di­rec­tors of the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB).

Sim­mons al­so stat­ed that he had not been giv­en the best ODI squad even though the new cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er al­so want­ed Dwayne Bra­vo and Kieron Pol­lard in the team, the omis­sions of both play­ers may have caused the de­vel­op­ment of the lat­est con­tro­ver­sy.

Yes­ter­day, Ram­per­sad, an in­flu­en­tial mem­ber of the TTCB, said that al­though he did not con­done the method used by Sim­mons to air his dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the de­ci­sion of the se­lec­tion pan­el, he must have thought it im­por­tant enough to take the po­si­tion he did.

"Sim­mons would have known be­fore-hand the con­se­quences of his ac­tions, and we should now seek to find out the truth of the al­le­ga­tions he has made, and if he is cor­rect, what is go­ing to be done about it," said Ram­per­sad.

The pres­i­dent of the 2015 NGC T20 cham­pi­on team Mer­ry Boys Crick­et Club said that the ut­ter­ances of Sim­mons re­flects the gen­er­al feel­ing of peo­ple on the ground and crick­et fans in T&T, that their play­ers have been left hold­ing the sticky end of the stick fol­low­ing the abort­ed West In­dies tour of In­dia late last year be­cause of a pay dis­pute with the WICB.

Al­so, the TTCB had sup­port­ed two can­di­dates op­posed to in­cum­bents Dave Cameron and Em­manuel Nan­than in elec­tions for the pres­i­den­cy and vice-pres­i­den­cy of the WICB ear­li­er this year.

And pre­vi­ous to that, the TTCB had al­so vot­ed against Clive Lloyd in the pre­vi­ous WICB elec­tions, who now is the chair­man of se­lec­tors, a pan­el which al­so in­clude Court­ney Walsh, El­dine Bap­tiste and Court­ney Browne.

In­ter­est­ing­ly De­nesh Ramdin, Bra­vo and Meris­sa Aguilleira, who are all from T&T, were co­in­ci­den­tal­ly re­moved as cap­tains of the West In­dies Test, ODI and Women's teams re­spec­tive­ly in Sep­tem­ber.

In a me­dia re­lease on Tues­day, WICB chief ex­ec­u­tive Michael Muir­head, said Sim­mons has not been fired, but has been asked to an­swer "breach­es of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty," af­ter the for­mer West In­dies all­rounder and suc­cess­ful Ire­land coach was sus­pend­ed be­cause of his pub­lic state­ments.

Muir­head said they hoped to reach a de­ci­sion on Sim­mons' fu­ture in the next sev­en days.

"What has hap­pened with Phil Sim­mons is most un­for­tu­nate. Rest as­sured he has not been fired," he said. "Let us say he has been called to an­swer breach­es of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and bring­ing the WICB in­to dis­re­pute. He will be giv­en a fair hear­ing by a pan­el and a de­ci­sion will be made with­in the bound­aries of our own HR pol­i­cy.

"Dur­ing the process he will con­tin­ue to en­joy the full ben­e­fits of his full re­mu­ner­a­tion. The mat­ter will be dealt with in an ex­pe­di­tious man­ner and it is our in­ten­tion to have a de­ci­sion with­in the next sev­en work­ing days."

Lloyd al­so is­sued a state­ment say­ing such out­bursts could not be ex­cused. Sim­mons had said that he and Lloyd had been in agree­ment about want­i­ng Bra­vo and Pol­lard back in the ODI squad, but had been out­vot­ed 3-2 by the oth­er se­lec­tors.

"Phil has apol­o­gised to all for his re­cent pub­lic state­ments and how strong­ly he would have felt on cer­tain se­lec­tion mat­ters of the team," Lloyd said. "We agreed–at times–that we will have a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion, but we can­not con­done such out­bursts. There­fore, we will al­ways seek dis­cus­sion and di­a­logue at every stage of the se­lec­tion process and work to­wards the best in­ter­est of West In­dies crick­et."

His com­ments came be­fore the squad was of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced by the WICB. An e-mail from Muir­head in­formed Sim­mons of his sus­pen­sion with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, six months af­ter he had tak­en up the job.

For­mer fast bowler and se­lec­tor Bap­tiste was hand­ed the role of in­ter­im coach for the tour of Sri Lan­ka. Sim­mons was se­lect­ed ahead of Bap­tiste ear­li­er this year for the job as coach of the West In­dies team.