ST JOHN’S, Antigua, CMC – Cricket West Indies (CWI) is not ruling out the possibility of having separate coaches for the white-ball and red-ball teams when they replace Phil Simmons who has resigned as head coach. CWI chief executive officer Johnny Grave said administrators had to explore all available options as they seek to find the best way forward for the men’s senior teams.
“We’ve seen other teams split the coaching role between the white-ball [ODI and T20] teams and the red-ball [Test] teams and I think that we have to look at all options and make the best possible decisions,” he said on SportsMax Zone late yesterday.
Grave was speaking on the heels of CWI’s announcement that following West Indies’ crash out of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, Simmons had resigned as head coach but would stay on until after the November 30 to December 12 Test series against Australia. The regional men were eliminated from the main draw of the tournament last Friday when they fell to a nine-wicket defeat to Ireland in Hobart. They had also suffered a 42-run loss to Scotland last Monday, before rebounding to beat Zimbabwe by 31 runs two days later.
CWI has promised a full review of the side’s World Cup campaign, which Grave said Simmons would still be involved in.
Asked whether any thought had been given to Simmons’ replacement, Grave said CWI would be “sensible and strategic in our review and approach and try and keep, difficult as it is, the emotions out of it”.
“Everyone is hurting from the bitter disappointment of those two defeats in Hobart. I think that we will conduct a review of that World Cup as everyone would expect us to…. The Australia test series finishes on December 12th and our next assignment is a Test series that begins February 4th. We’ve got to use that time to properly plan and strategize the way forward. We’ve got to look at all the options that are available to us as we plot a course for that men’s senior side in terms of how we take it forward,” he added.
The cricket administrator declined to say whether Simmons would have been asked to step aside if he had not resigned.
“I don’t know what the outcome would have been of the review or what decisions would have been made,” Grave said.
However, he noted that Simmons’ contract was due to come to an end in March and “he always knew that it was going to be dependent on results”. “We’re in the results business,” the CWI CEO said.
In the CWI statement officially announcing his resignation, Simmons said the decision was “a move I have been considering for some time” and not a knee-jerk reaction to the disappointing World Cup performance.
The 59-year-old former West Indies allrounder was at the helm in 2016 when the Caribbean men won their second World Cup title, defeating England at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata.
Earlier this year, he guided the team’s fortunes in their hard-fought 1-0 Test series win over England on home soil to capture the Richards-Botham Trophy, followed in June by a Test series victory against Bangladesh in their last outing.
