FORMER West Indies Cricket Board (now Cricket West Indies) director Baldath Mahabir believes a new West Indies coach will not change the fortunes of the regional cricket team, saying West Indies cricket needs restructuring in order to see changes in results.
Phil Simmons announced his resignation as head coach on Monday. In his most recent stint, Simmons was the coach of the team from 2019-2022.
His decision to resign came just days after West Indies failed to advance to the Super 12s of the 2022 International Cricket Council T20 World Cup in Australia.
West Indies, winners of the 2012 and 2016 World T20 titles, lost two of their three matches in the qualifying tournament. West Indies played in Group B of the qualifiers alongside Ireland, Zimbabwe and Scotland.
Mahabir doesn’t think a new coach will help.
“No (it will not make a difference). They may be able to move the needle a little bit in the upper direction, but I can’t see anything major happening unless we fix the foundation of West Indies cricket.”
Giving examples of what changes in the structure will be beneficial Mahabir said the territorial boards must improve their system and more attention must be given to the development of cricketers.
“It needs to be a bottom-up approach to fix West Indies cricket. No coach is going to make any significant difference.”
The former director commended Simmons for stepping down.
“I give him full credit for owning up to the responsibility that the team is not performing as well as he would have liked it to be and he considers it part of his remit to have a better West Indies team. I actually applaud him for his stance.”
People in the West Indies, including fans, are asking for more resignations, including that of T20 and 50-Over captain Nicholas Pooran.
Mahabir was uncertain whether other resignations are on the horizon.
“I can’t say…I can’t say what is going on in the minds of the people.”
Mahabir said Cricket West Indies (CWI) pointed at the players for the poor results, but needed to accept more responsibility for the dismal performance by West Indies in the T20 World Cup qualifiers.
“I expected from people in authority an admission of failure,” Mahabir said. “I would openly say that I was disappointed in the president’s press release, where he virtually pushed the players under the bus. He should have stuck his hand up and said, 'Somewhere the board has failed and I am the leader of this organisation and I have to take some measure of blame.'”
In a CWI media release on Friday after West Indies were eliminated from the qualifiers, CWI president Ricky Skerritt said, “I am deeply disappointed with the performance results of our team…and I appreciate the sense of utter frustration that is being experienced by many.”
Skerritt said the effort of the West Indies batsmen against spin is a concern.
“The ongoing inability of our batsmen to prevail over opposing slow bowling continued to be an obvious weakness in Australia and untimely shot selections seem to be deeply embedded in the T20 batt
