#BTColumn – World Cup trial for Phil Simmons” coaching cadre

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By Tony McWatt

This year’s 2022 ICC World Cup will effectively serve as a trial of sorts for West Indies head coach Phil Simmons as well as his batting and bowling deputies Monty Desai and Roddy Estwick. The West Indies finished dead last among the Super12 teams at last year’s World Cup and anything less than a substantial improvement this time around could and should prove to be a death knell for Simmons and his two cohorts.

Simmons must consider himself lucky to have dodged the bullet of immediate contract termination that should rightfully have been a consequence of the West Indies’ embarrassingly disastrous showing at last year’s World Cup. Along with then skipper Kieron Pollard he was thought to be a key influence behind some of the squad’s most dubious selections. Particularly the inclusion of the ageing and obviously unfit Ravi Rampaul, as well as the initial exclusion of the former captain Jason Holder. The overaged West Indies team that represented the Caribbean region at last year’s World Cup was, therefore, very much of Simmons’ choosing, never mind the then selections chair Roger Harper having had to be the fall guy in taking the lion’s share of the blame and subsequently losing his post as a direct consequence of the team’s predictably poor showing.

Should this year’s West Indies Cup campaign prove to be similarly disastrous, there will be no recourse for Simmons and no one for him to hide behind. As Harper’s fairly new replacement, the Rt. Honourable Desmond Haynes is still very much in the early stages honeymoon period of his role as selections chair. Given the immense credibility and outstanding popularity he’d brought to the position as a direct result of his legendary achievements as a former West Indies opening batsman, it is highly unlikely to be a honeymoon that will be ending anytime soon.

As young, relatively inexperienced and growing into the job as he is, indisputably, current captain Nicholas Pooran will also likely be on the receiving end of some sympathetic slack for any occurring shortcomings in the squad’s actual World Cup performance. Albeit much less so than selection chairman Haynes.

Keen observers of West Indies cricket would not have failed to notice the country and club connections between Simmons and the T20I untested, Yannick Cariah, whose surprising selection to the squad was by far its most controversial. Should Cariah fail to deliver at the World Cup in his assigned role as the squad’s only leg spinner, the fingers of blame for his dubious selection will likely all be pointed squarely at Simmons. Far more so than at anyone else.

Simmons’ October 2019 second-term reappointment as West Indies head coach for an extended, if not historically unprecedented, four-year term through to next year’s 2023 ICC 50 Over World Cup had been heavily influenced by the then recently elected Cricket West Indies president Ricky Skerritt’s publicly stated preference for “local content” coaching. At the time Simmons was by far the most qualified of all the available Caribbean-born coaches. Hence his appointment to the position was for the most part, warmly and enthusiastically received by the greater majority of West Indies cricket’s fans and followers.

Fast forward to this month actually being Simmons contract’s third-year anniversary and the situation could not be any more radically different. Punctuated as it has been by the West Indies’ indifferent and inconsistent performances across all three formats, players apparently regressing rather than progressing in terms of their personal development and overall less than satisfactory results, Simmons’ tenure has become increasingly unpopular with clamouring calls for his replacement becoming more strident with each passing month.

Former West Indies captain Brian Lara was recently, somewhat surprisingly, appointed as head coach for the Indian Premier’s (IPL) League Sunrisers Hyderabad. A very interesting development that will also serve as a tangible indication that the paucity of Caribbean-born qualified coaches that might have existed four years ago to overly influence Simmons’ subsequent appointment now no longer holds true. So too will the even more recent success of head coach Shivnarine Chanderpaul and his illustrious deputy Sir Curtly Ambrose, in leading the Jamaica Tallawahs to unexpected success as this year’s 2022 Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) Championship title winners.

In his very first head coach assignment, the now 48-year-old Chanderpaul, who having scored 11,867 by the end of his West Indies playing career, had established an indisputable reputation for himself as one of the greatest ever batsmen of his era, piloted the Jamaica Tallawahs to their third CPL title. And, even more importantly, their first in six years. An accomplishment not many would have thought possible after the Tallawahs had ended the tournament’s Preliminary Round with an unspectacular record of four wins, five losses and one no-result from its ten matches played.

Together with his deputy bowling coach, in the personality of another legendary former West Indian former great Sir Curtly Ambrose, whose instant recruitment had been his very first act of duty upon assuming the Tallawahs coaching assignment, Chanderpaul managed to instil confidence and self-belief to his charges that allowed them to overcome all odds en route to the CPL Championship title. He and Ambrose also formed a most admirable partnership with Tallawah’s captain Rovman Powell, which proved to be the gelling glue for the team’s eventual success.

The significance of the Tallawah’s 2022 CPL success is that it has demonstrated the heights that can be achieved when capable coaches are able to motivate their player charges to greater levels of accomplishment. Under Chanderpaul and Ambrose’s guidance, Brandon King who had struggled in recent times to duplicate the success he’d achieved in his breakout 2019 CPL Season during which he’d scored 496 runs in 12 matches including a career-high unbeaten 132, had his best tournament ever. King’s 2022 CPL returns were a Player-of-the-Tournament, chart-topping 422 runs from 12 innings batted.

Under Chanderpaul and Ambrose’s combined guidance skipper Powell and Sharmarh Brooks also had relatively impressive 2022 CPL Seasons. Powell scored 281 runs from 12 innings batted while Brooks’ returns of 241 from 7 were at an even higher average.

Three of the Tallawah’s bowlers also featured prominently in the tournament’s leading wicket-takers chart. Imad Wasim (17), Mohammad Amir (16) and Fabian Allen (13) were among the championship’s leading bowlers. Further testaments to the effective coaching influences of Chanderpaul and Ambrose.

Should the need arise anytime soon for sufficiently qualified candidates to be appointed as suitable replacements for Simmons, both Chanderpaul and Ambrose have, therefore, already demonstrated that they can now be just as easily identified. By comparison to their combined Jamaica Tallawahs’ 2022 Hero CPL success, the West Indies under the guidance of Simmons and his charges has played 18 T20Is since last year’s World Cup. Of those, they have won only 7 and lost 14. Moreover, two of those seven victories were against lower-rated Bangladesh. Just as many were very close last over triumphs against England that could easily have gone the other way.

Certainly not the type of record that will instil any great hopes for outstanding West Indies success at this year’s World Cup. As previously mentioned though, at the very least some measure of progressive improvement must be achieved and anything short of a top 8 finish at the end of the Super8 round will be deemed as wholly unsatisfactory.

What an interesting and consequential World Cup this may, therefore, prove to be. Especially so for Phil Simmons and his coaching cadre!

About The Writer: Guyana-born, Toronto-based, Tony McWatt is the publisher of both the WI Wickets and Wickets/monthly online cricket magazines that are respectively targeted toward Caribbean and Canadian readers. He is also the only son of former Guyana and West Indies wicket-keeper batsman the late Clifford “Baby Boy” McWatt.