By Neto Baptiste
President of Cricket West Indies, Ricky Skerritt, said he has no regrets over the removal of then interim coach of the senior West Indies men’s team, Richard Pybus, ahead of the ICC Cricket World Cup in May last year.
Many pundits, at the time, felt the move further dented the senior team’s chances of a profitable finish at the tournament but speaking on the Good Morning Jojo Sports Show, Skerritt said the elevation of then A team coach, Floyd Reifer, was opportunity he would not have gotten under normal circumstances.
“Well, if you’re talking about changing the coach and one other person from the management team shortly after the election
[in 2019]
I have no regrets because that was about promoting the West Indies A Team coach to give him an opportunity to go to England and to Ireland before then [the World Cup] and to show what he is worth and give him an opportunity to get the experience so that we could have at least one coach in our armoury that have World Cup experience and to give West Indians to shine on a world stage,” he said.
Pybus presided over the West Indies’ 2-1 Test series victory over England just prior to the world Cup and had been expected to coach them in the tournament. Pybus returned to his position as West Indies’ high-performance director.
Skerritt also defended the performance of coach of the under-19 team, Graeme West, who has made a number of appearances with the regional team at the ICC Under-19 World Cup.
“West Indians want a World cup victory badly, we haven’t had it for 40 years but it is not going to come overnight and we are very harsh in our judgement of our World Cup teams and if they don’t win the cup we are unhappy. I understand that but the business of turning against a coach as the answer to a West Indies cricket problem and performance at the World Cup would be making the same mistake over and over again,” he said.
West Indies finished second from bottom in the group stages of the tournament with just five points from their nine matches.