Former West Indies cricketer, Philo Wallace, is calling for a critical assessment of the West Indies management team following their 2-1 defeat at the hands of England recently.
Wallace was at the time speaking on the Barbados’ radio programme, Mason and Guests where he shared his views on the series defeat.
“That’s a serious question, heads have rolled before, heads rolled before our winning and now after we’ve lost a big series that is,” said Wallace in answer to the question whether heads should roll.
“A lot of effort, a lot of time, a lot of money has been put into this tour to make it a success as it was obviously, with the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide, particularly with the guys coming up to England and the guys being in a bubble for some 51, 52 days so it meant a lot.”
The 50-year-old added: “Obviously the major concern for the chief selector when he was speaking was the batting. The batting stayed true to form and when you look at it we still could not get the batsmen to change their mode of dismissals.”
He reasoned, “We had some 19 LBW dismissals and that is a lot and they have bat contracts, luckily for them you have bats and pads and gloves from the same sponsors but what I’m saying when you look at it a critical examination must be done of that management team.”
Wallace suggested that head coach Phil Simmons needed to answer some questions.
“I think head coach Phil Simmons has some questions, some serious questions to be asked of him when they come back and I think the Director of Cricket would be one and maybe the Chairman of the Cricket Committee. I’m just calling positions to have a meeting and debrief of what went on, an assessment of the fast bowlers, you have Roddy Estwick assistant coach, Floyd Reifer who has been giving the task or challenge as batting coach again has not been able to get his methods through because the batsmen struggled, his methods obviously seem not to have worked and he obviously will have questions to answer.”
He added: “Obviously another question is fitness. We saw Shannon Gabriel limping through a couple test matches and a couple days as well. Is he 100 percent fit? All these questions need to be answered because England has shown if you rotate your players they can come through and England have also shown if you pick a squad they can go into their squad, rest men and pick men from that squad.”
Wallace argued “We had 15 men, a batting unit that was struggling, we had one extra batsman in Nkrumah Bonner, we don’t want to consider Raymond Reifer a batsman, he is an all-rounder so we had one extra batsman and the selectors could not find a space for Nkrumah Bonner to play. Why? Is he not good enough to play at Test match level and if he is not good enough to play at test match level why have you selected him?”
He continued: “Why were only two openers selected for that tour? Because when Shane Dowrich missed the ball and got struck on his face [Shai] Hope kept for a few and then Joshua DaSilva came out all these questions need to be answered,”
Wallace recommended that West Indies needs to look deeper and be more strategic in their thinking while sometimes venturing outside the box to bring more diversity into the selection and the way it the game is played.
