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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Simmons: Racial protests can spur Windies on

by

Vinode Mamchan
1864 days ago
20200614
Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrate in Brighton, England, ysterday. Global protests are taking place in the wake of George Floyd’s death who was killed on May 25 while in police custody in the US city of Minneapolis.

Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrate in Brighton, England, ysterday. Global protests are taking place in the wake of George Floyd’s death who was killed on May 25 while in police custody in the US city of Minneapolis.

Andrew Matthews/PA via AP

West In­dies head coach Phil Sim­mons thinks that the cur­rent Black Lives Mat­ter (BLM) protest that is go­ing on around the world and which is very vivid in Eng­land can ac­tu­al­ly spur his side on when they meet Eng­land in the up­com­ing three-Test se­ries in Eng­land.

Sim­mons speak­ing via Zoom from Old Traf­ford in Man­ches­ter on Sat­ur­day was re­spond­ing to a ques­tion on what the West In­dies team will do to show their sup­port for the move­ment. BLM protests came about af­ter 46-year-old black Amer­i­can George Floyd was killed in Min­neapo­lis, Min­neso­ta, USA dur­ing an ar­rest for al­leged­ly us­ing a coun­ter­feit bill.

Sim­mons said: "As cap­tain Hold­er (Ja­son) said we have spo­ken about how we will show our sup­port and we will do it again clos­er to the Test match. If play­ers need some­thing to mo­ti­vate them to play for the West In­dies then they should not be here. How­ev­er, we have seen in the past that when some­thing stirs the pot, we re­spond well."

West In­dies had just ar­rived in Eng­land in 1976. The past few se­ries had not been too com­fort­able for them. Aus­tralia had thrashed them 5-1. Back home, they had just about man­aged to beat In­dia 2-1.

On the eve of the first Test at Trent Bridge, Greig said: “I like to think that peo­ple are build­ing these West In­di­ans up be­cause I am not re­al­ly sure they’re as good as every­one thinks they are.

“Sure, they’ve got a cou­ple of fast bowlers, but you must re­mem­ber that if the West In­di­an get on top they are mag­nif­i­cent crick­eters, but if they’re down, they grov­el. And I in­tend, with the help of Closey (Bri­an Close) and a few oth­ers, to make them grov­el.

"Viv Richards checked the dic­tio­nary de­f­i­n­i­tion of the of­fend­ing word and lat­er re­marked, “In oth­er words, he was go­ing to have us down on our knees, beg­ging for mer­cy. This was the great­est mo­ti­vat­ing speech the Eng­land cap­tain could have giv­en to any West In­di­an team.” The West In­dies went on to win the se­ries 3-0.

Mean­while, Sim­mons added that the play­ers are com­fort­able in the bio-se­cure en­vi­ron­ment and look­ing ahead to de­fend the Wis­den tro­phy. "We are com­fort­able, the lock­down is bet­ter than what we had in March/April in our dif­fer­ent coun­tries. The play­ers can go out there and train and they look for­ward to putting in the work.

"We have the best team that we can have at the mo­ment. Some guys de­cid­ed against mak­ing the tour but we have to work with the guys we have here and pre­pare them as best as we can to fill the shoes of those who are not here. If they do that then they can go on to great things."

Dar­ren Bra­vo, Shim­ron Het­my­er, and Keemo Paul have all de­cid­ed against the tour­ing due to the Coro­n­avirus. The West In­dies have tak­en a squad that in­cludes 25 play­ers for this tour. They have cho­sen 14 as the Test squad and an­oth­er 11 as re­serves. How­ev­er, Sim­mons said that there could be a crossover. "Let's put the sit­u­a­tion with the squad in­to per­spec­tive. If we look at Shan­non Gabriel, he is com­ing off an in­jury and once he per­forms well in train­ing lead­ing up to the Tests then he can come in­to the squad."

The first Test be­gins on Ju­ly 8 in Southamp­ton.


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