Sus­pend­ed West In­dies crick­et coach Phil Sim­mons was due to meet with the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) to­day in An­tigua to an­swer to them over his pub­lic out­burst over the ex­clu­sion of Kieron Pol­lard and Dwayne Bra­vo but the meet­ing will not come off as planned.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Sim­mons has asked for some time be­fore fac­ing the WICB ap­point­ed Hu­man Re­source com­mit­tee. Sim­mons was sus­pend­ed last Mon­day af­ter he al­leged that there was "out­side in­ter­fer­ence" in the se­lec­tion process when it came to Bra­vo and Pol­lard.

Sim­mons, who is cur­rent­ly in Eng­land, made the com­ments at the end of the West In­dies crick­et team camp in Bar­ba­dos last week. He said that "out­side in­ter­fer­ence" in the se­lec­tion process seems to have kept out the duo be­cause he and chair­man of se­lec­tors Clive Lloyd both want­ed the two Red Force play­ers back in­to the One Day In­ter­na­tion­al (ODI) team for the se­ries of Sri Lan­ka. He added that Lloyd and him­self were out­vot­ed 3-2 by the oth­er se­lec­tors, Court­ney Walsh, Court­ney Browne and El­dine Bap­tiste.

The WICB man­age­ment im­me­di­ate­ly act­ed and sus­pend­ed him for the tour to Sri Lan­ka and he was re­placed by Bap­tiste who was al­ways go­ing to be on the tour as an "on tour" se­lec­tor. The team ar­rived in Sri Lan­ka the day be­fore and to­day Bap­tiste will have his first ses­sion at Colom­bo.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Sim­mons will not ap­pear be­fore any dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee, at least not yet, as he first has to ap­pear be­fore the HR com­mit­tee and WICB CEO Michael Muir­head. the HR com­mit­tee has to be very care­ful how they go about this process be­cause they have to abide by cer­tain labour laws in An­tigua.

He must then pro­vide ev­i­dence to back up his claims and re­veal where this out­side in­ter­fer­ence is com­ing from. If the HR com­mit­tee and the CEO finds that Sim­mons can't sub­stan­ti­ate his claims then he may be sent to the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee where he will then be judged to see which lev­el of of­fence he com­mit­ted and what is the ap­pro­pri­ate penal­ty.

Late last evening mem­bers of the HR com­mit­tee re­ceived com­mu­ni­ca­tion that Sim­mons had asked for some time be­fore ap­pear­ing be­fore them and they are ex­pect­ed to meet with­in the next few days.

Sim­mons at this point is not be­ing dis­ci­plined, ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial of the WICB. "He made com­ments that did not find favour with the board and they have set up a com­mit­tee to hear from him. He did not ac­cuse any­one specif­i­cal­ly, he did not say whether that 'in­ter­fer­ence' came from the board, so at this mo­ment it is just pure­ly an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to see whether there was any­thing that he did that war­rants him fac­ing the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee."