Amidst widespread calls from former players, pundits, and fans for the coaching staff and in particular the selectors to be sacked after the disastrous showing by West Indies at the ongoing World T20 in the United Arab Emirates, their contracts have been extended until the end of the year due to the hectic schedule.
This was confirmed by Johnny Grave, the Cricket West Indies’ Chief Executive Officer, on Tuesday evening on Barbados radio programme, Mason and Guest.
In October 2019, Roger Harper was appointed on a two-year contract as Lead Selector for the Men’s team, and his panel consists of Miles Bascombe and Head Coach Phil Simmons.
Simmons was reappointed Head Coach at this stage, as the new Ricky Skerritt administration ringed the changes.
The CEO explained given the volume of cricket they had in recent months and what is on the immediate horizon, they opted to not to make rash changes at this juncture.
“Most of the team management and the selectors are coming up to the end of their existing contracts which were signed on a two-year basis and we have extended most of them just to the end of the year and they are going through a review period at the moment,” the CEO explained.
“We didn’t really want to be reviewing performances and extending or not extending contracts during the World Cup and with the amount of cricket we have got going at the moment, we just extended everyone to the end of the year and once we go through that we with the new process will be making the announcements.”
“There just has not been enough time really for us to go through this process as a management group as well us making recommendations to the board,” Grave further clarified.
The CEO underscored that going forward, there must be an effort made to implement programmes or policies which are aimed at consistent development on a long-term basis.
“We are very focused as a management group on continuing to improve the system of West Indies cricket and this is not really about recycling people from the system as we have done that before and I would argue with limited success so we actually need to focus on improving the system and in which we are producing quality players and preparing players for that World stage.”
Grave further clarified that unlike reports about some Member Directors not knowing about the extensions, they were made aware and Director of Cricket Jimmy Adams will be making a full report on the contracts.
“Any extension to contracts, we always speak to the Board before we ratify that and will be doing that at the next Board of Directors meeting,” he expressed.
“We gave an update to the board at the last meeting a few weeks ago on the team management contracts that were up for renewal and also the selectors, so, they are expecting a full report from the Director [of Cricket] Jimmy Adams on the contracts.”
A committee, including CWI Vice-President Dr. Kishore Shallow, Jimmy Adams, Philo Wallace and Chairman Enoch Lewis, has started the review process of the CWI selection policy.
