ST JOHN'S–Re­in­stat­ed West In­dies head coach Phil Sim­mons says he is ea­ger to move on from the in­ci­dent that led to his sus­pen­sion for the Sri Lan­ka tour and sparked con­tro­ver­sy across the re­gion.

In a pre­pared au­dio state­ment re­leased on Tues­day by the West In­dies Crick­et Board, Sim­mons apol­o­gised for the now well-pub­li­cised con­tro­ver­sy, not­ing that he was now anx­ious to re­sume his du­ties with the Caribbean side.

On re­in­stat­ing Sim­mons, the Board said Tues­day it had rep­ri­mand­ed the for­mer play­er for the com­ments, and al­so asked him to make a pub­lic apol­o­gy.

"I re­gret my pub­lic out­burst dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on the 25th of Sep­tem­ber, 2015 in Bar­ba­dos, called to an­nounce the West In­dies Crick­et Board men's se­nior team se­lect­ed to tour Sri Lan­ka in Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber and the rev­e­la­tion of the vot­ing that took place at the team se­lec­tion meet­ing," Sim­mons said in his apol­o­gy.

"I ex­tend a pub­lic apol­o­gy to all whom I may have of­fend­ed. I have per­son­al­ly apol­o­gised to my fel­low se­lec­tors and the West In­dies Crick­et Board, and now do so again pub­licly."

"I am look­ing for­ward to putting this be­hind me and do­ing the job I en­joy with the West In­dies se­nior men's teams, to con­tin­ue head­ing to­wards the goal that we have in sight and to­wards which we have start­ed work­ing," the 52-year-old Trinida­di­an said.

The con­tro­ver­sy arose when Sim­mons lashed out at the se­lec­tion process, blam­ing "out­side in­ter­fer­ence" for the non-se­lec­tion of all-rounders Dwayne Bra­vo and Kieron Pol­lard for the one-day tour of Sri Lan­ka.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence in Bar­ba­dos pri­or to the Test squad's de­par­ture for Sri Lan­ka, Sim­mons said while he and chair­man of se­lec­tors, Clive Lloyd, were in favour of the duo's re­turn, they had been out-vot­ed by the three oth­er se­lec­tors.

(CMC)

"That's not the dis­ap­point­ing fact, the dis­ap­point­ing fact is that you can lose 3-2 in a vote-off but there is too much in­ter­fer­ence from out­side in the se­lec­tion of the ODI squad," Sim­mons said at the time.

"And it's dis­ap­point­ing for me to know that in any as­pect of life (peo­ple would use) their po­si­tion to get peo­ple in­to a squad for in this case, get peo­ple left out of a squad."

"It is wrong and I don't like it and that is my beef with the se­lec­tion of the ODI team."

The out­burst led to his sus­pen­sion for the Test tour of Sri Lan­ka, with fel­low se­lec­tor El­dine Bap­tiste tak­ing up the in­ter­im role.

Sim­mons was sub­se­quent­ly called be­fore the WICB's Hu­man Re­source Com­mit­tee to an­swer for the com­ments.

Re­gard­ing the claims of out­side in­ter­fer­ence, the WICB said it would "im­me­di­ate­ly in­ves­ti­gate the al­le­ga­tions made by Sim­mons, and take the nec­es­sary and ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion fol­low­ing this in­ves­ti­ga­tion."

Sim­mons will now lead the side on the Test tour of Aus­tralia start­ing next month.