SIX WEEKS after the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) suspended him as head coach for “inappropriately commenting” on the selection of the ODI squad for the tour of Sri Lanka, Phil Simmons finally laid out his case last week.
In the interim, he was engaged in composing the apology demanded of him by the WICB for his angry words in an interview with the media while the WICB itself had been distracted by its unrelated, complex confrontation with the Caribbean Community governments (Caricom) sub-committee on cricket over the conclusions of the latest review committee on its governance.
In the spill-over of his mounting frustration in the post he took up last March, Simmons, also one of the five selectors, spoke of “people (who) would use their position to get people into a squad or…get people left out of a squad.”
In a lengthy and detailed statement presented to the WICB’s chief executive officer Michael Muirhead, Simmons left no doubt he was referring to the two most powerful men in West Indies cricket at present, board president Dave Cameron and director of cricket Richard Pybus, the Englishman who was hired in October 2013 after brief international stints in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
His account, accompanied by copies of relevant e-mails, followed the WICB’s decision to reinstate him for the current tour of Australia. The postscript was that it would “immediately investigate” his charges after which it would take ‘the necessary and appropriate action.”
A copy of his statement has been made available to me by a trusted source.
Simmons was appointed head coach last March after eight successful years with Ireland, the strongest of the ICC’s associates. He thus avoided the turbulence that ensued after the premature withdrawal of the West Indies team from the tour of India in October; he was then