ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Pres­i­dent of Crick­et West In­dies (CWI), Dr Kishore Shal­low has main­tained that there is no in­ten­tion to fire West In­dies head coach Daren Sam­my, de­spite his los­ing record since tak­ing charge of all for­mats ear­li­er this year.

The 41-year-old Sam­my, who was ap­point­ed all-for­mat coach in April, has faced mount­ing pres­sure fol­low­ing a string of bad re­sults.

Since then, the Windies were swept by Aus­tralia (3-0) and In­dia (2-0) in their Test se­ries and have won just six of their last 18 T20Is and three of their nine One Day In­ter­na­tion­als.

How­ev­er, speak­ing dur­ing an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view on Is­ports i95.5 FM on Thurs­day, Shal­low said Sam­my’s job would not hinge on the re­sults of the on­go­ing Test se­ries against New Zealand.

“I don’t think that whether we win this se­ries or not will be a re­sult of the cur­rent com­po­si­tion of our se­lec­tion sys­tem. It is not, be­cause be­fore each se­ries if we go across and ask across the re­gion if it is the cor­rect squad cho­sen for the tour, most peo­ple will be in agree­ment, so clear­ly that is not the is­sue.

“And even if a play­er is un­avail­able due to in­jury, you can’t blame a se­lec­tor for that ei­ther and we are with­out two of our lead­ing fast bowlers in the cur­rent Test se­ries against New Zealand in Shamar Joseph and Alzarri Joseph,” Shal­low point­ed out.

“So, we un­der­stand the is­sue and you won’t get a knee-jerk re­ac­tion from me, be­cause I un­der­stand ful­ly well what it takes for us to be suc­cess­ful con­sis­tent­ly, but we have to ad­dress the fun­da­men­tal de­fi­cien­cies in our sys­tem which we haven’t done well over the years.”

Shal­low ad­mit­ted, though, that he was less than im­pressed by the team’s re­cent per­for­mances.

How­ev­er, he said CWI was ful­ly aware of what need­ed to be done to im­prove West In­dies crick­et and was in the process of do­ing so.

“We haven’t seen the sort of per­for­mances and I would be the very first to put up my hand and say I’m not pleased with the young team’s per­for­mance, but this isn’t any­thing new. We’ve been in­con­sis­tent at best with our per­for­mances, mean­ing we haven’t been do­ing well.

“When­ev­er we’ve been per­form­ing, and we see glimpses of bril­liance we’ve been in­con­sis­tent in that case,” Shal­low said.

“But it goes back about three decades now, so it is not new. I said from the very start that it is not an overnight fix for West In­dies crick­et…We are not go­ing to pro­duce the re­sults that we are dy­ing for, that we have been wait­ing for al­most im­pa­tient­ly.

“We know our tal­ent, and we’ve been here be­fore where we have gained a lit­tle suc­cess that we be­lieve that we can re­turn there. I have no doubt that we can re­turn there but it takes now the im­ple­men­ta­tion of sys­tems and in­fra­struc­ture across the re­gion and sta­bil­is­ing our fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion,” he added.

<Min­is­ter Shal­low stays on as CWI Pres­i­dent>

Mean­while, as re­port­ed by Guardian Me­dia Sports on Sat­ur­day, Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) pres­i­dent, Dr Kishore Shal­low, says he will not step down from his role as pres­i­dent of the board af­ter be­ing elect­ed as a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment (MP) in the St Vin­cent and Grenadines par­lia­ment on No­vem­ber 27, 2025. In a video state­ment post­ed yes­ter­day af­ter­noon on the Windies Crick­et YouTube page by CWI, Dr Shal­low says he will not seek re-elec­tion in the next CWI elec­tions but will see out his term.

He says all due dili­gence, le­gal, eth­i­cal and oth­er­wise, has been con­duct­ed by the board, as he de­fend­ed his de­ci­sion mo­ments ago. He said there are no ‘con­flict of in­ter­est’ con­cerns that have arisen.

Dr Shal­low says be­ing CWI pres­i­dent “is not a 9-5 job”, and oth­er ICC mem­bers hold sim­i­lar port­fo­lios.

The next CWI elec­tion is due in 2027. It comes as Dr Shal­low faces mount­ing pres­sure around the re­gion to re­lin­quish the pres­i­den­cy and not hold dual roles.

(CMC)