By Neto Baptiste
Cricket West Indies (CWI) could, this week, announce an interim head coach to replace Phil Simmons who resigned following the team’s failure to qualify for the Super 12 stage of the tournament in October.
This is according to CEO Johnny Grave, who said a recommendation will be put before the board of directors this week and once approved, a new coach could take the reins of the team on what he said should be an interim basis.
“We’re going to Zimbabwe at the end of January, so we’re hoping to get the board to approve an interim head coach to get us through that January, February, March period where we go and play Test cricket in Zimbabwe and South Africa followed by six white ball games in South Africa. We should hopefully be able to announce that later this week if the board approves our recommendations,” he said.
“We’re certainly not making a long term recommendation to the board in terms of that appointment because we do want to delay any long term decision of a head coach until we’ve gotten that world cup review and have read it and digested it and seen if there are any recommendations or other things we want to factor in before going down the road of appointing a long term head coach,” he added.
Following the team’s failure to qualify for the Super 12 round of the T20 World Cup, CWI named a three-member committee to conduct a comprehensive review of the team’s early exit.
The committee is chaired by Justice Patrick Thompson Jr, a High Court Judge at the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court. The other members are West Indies batting legend Brian Lara and International cricket coach, South African Mickey Arthur.
Grave said the committee will present their findings to CWI in short order.
“They’re in the final stages of interview the final few stakeholders and we’re due to get the report before the end of the year. It will then be discussed by the board of directors and then I hope that whatever the independent review recommends that we would adopt them fully and I would be responsible and in charge of ensuring Cricket West Indies as an organisation implements all the recommendations as quickly as it possibly can,” the CEO said.
Asked whether he thought it was time for the regional body to appoint separate coaches for each format, Grave rendered his personal opinion, supporting the practice given what he called the “demand” of international cricket.
“I think that the demands in international cricket and the three different formats and the pool of players that the head coach is having to manage, who aren’t always necessarily in the same physical location or aren’t always playing in the same competition so I think the demands of a head coach who has to do all formats and has the energy to prepare the players for those international engagements, those world cups and to do the sort of long term planning, team strategy, the analysis of opposition and manage, communicate and build relationships is a lot to ask for one person,” he said.
The West Indies team failed to qualify for the Super12s phase (second round) after losing unexpectedly to lower ranked teams, Scotland and Ireland. The losses caused great disappointment and frustration among all West Indies cricket stakeholders. The Group B qualifier round was played at Bellerive Oval in Tasmania where the team achieved their only victory over Zimbabwe, a team that qualified ahead of West Indies by defeating both Scotland and Ireland.
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