West Indies Cricket Fans

howzdat wrote:

howzdat wrote:AFRO, my dear old thing, have your friends @ Factory Road got excuses penned in the eventuality that Windies lose to Ireland in this 1st T20 match? Maybe big Phil will come into the frame after Gibson gets the sack

I get a message to seh that AFRO fly out to the emerald isle on a mission. He has been chosen as the one to convince the Irish cricketing authorities to accept a promissory note for some of the anticipated ICC millions - and a commitment for reciprocal tours to the WI over the next 100 years - in return for them releasing Simmons to tek up the Windies head coach position.

Let us wait and see if he will be successful btw my informant also tell me seh that AFRO so damn nervous that he gone pon the mission in disguise and with this video as encouragement that everything gonna be alright if he hand-le the situation just right.

Ireland will host the West Indies in a one-day game in September 2017.

The international match, on Wednesday, 13 September, will see Ireland come up against former coach Phil Simmons, now at the helm of his homeland.

"I'm really looking forward to bringing the team to Ireland," said Simmons. "I had eight great years there and made some lasting friendships. It should be a tough contest."

Ireland won when the sides met at the Cricket World Cup in February 2015.

Half centuries from Paul Stirling, Ed Joyce and Niall O'Brien helped Ireland to a famous four-wicket triumph.

The West Indies will play the match ahead of their one-day series against England.

Dates confirmed for May 2017 series

Cricket Ireland have also confirmed the dates for the series with New Zealand and Bangladesh next May.

Ireland play Bangladesh in the first game on Friday, 12 May before facing New Zealand two days later.

New Zealand and Bangladesh go head-to-head on Wednesday, 17 May, with Ireland playing Bangladesh for a second time on Friday, 19 May.

Ireland's final game is against New Zealand on Sunday, 21 May, with the last match in the series between New Zealand and Bangladesh taking place three days later.

"It's fantastic we're getting the opportunity to play against so many of the ICC Full Members," said Ireland coach John Bracewell.

"I'm looking forward to taking on New Zealand and Bangladesh on our own soil. Conditions in May will hopefully be to our advantage and represents a great opportunity for us to collect some wins.

"With the West Indies due later next year we'll have played eight of the top nine sides in a short period. That's got to be good for our cricketing development."

Before then Ireland are in action this weekend when they take on Afghanistan in a five-match series at Stormont.

The first game gets under way at 10:45 BST on Sunday.

howzdat wrote:Sadly, I think that Simmons is on borrowed time in the role. ....

WICB CEO Michael Muirhead certainly seemed to think so back in March 2015 when he hired Simmons out of a field of seven, saying: "Phil has a proven ability to develop players, while cultivating great team spirit and a winning culture. We have a number of young, talented players about whom he is excited to be coaching and we believe he is the right fit."

Muirhead seemed especially impressed with one particular Simmons quality: "His independence of character and his resolve to stand up for what he believes in were also strong qualities that convinced us that Phil was best suited to usher the West Indies team into a new era of success."

Contrast that with what Muirhead, now the out-going CEO, is saying today: "The coach has an opinion and the board collectively had another opinion, and that had happened on more than one occasion. It has been an ongoing thing, where I think Phil, in all that he has said and done, he has not aligned… the relationships were breaking down. I think he himself had ideas for a different strategic approach, notwithstanding one already having been approved and adopted by the board. I don't think he was aligned with that."

Evidently, the "independence of character" and "resolve to stand up for what he believes in" were not so appealing to the majority of the board's directors, or the director of cricket, Richard Pybus, or the board's president, Dave Cameron.

Muirhead did not outline the differences between the board and Simmons, but the public record does show that one of the big bones of contention was who has what degree of say in the selection of players.

Simmons has always been a team player, so the pattern of public outbursts of discontent that emerged over the last 12 months meant that for him, things behind the scenes had become unbearable
As a man whose job performance was largely dependent on success on the field, Simmons naturally wanted the best players available to get those results. But in that September interview before the Sri Lanka tour, frustration spoke for Simmons when he commented on the exclusion of Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard.

"The disappointing fact is that you can lose 3-2 in a vote-off but there is too much interference from outside in the selection of the ODI squad and it's disappointing for me to know that in any aspect of life… [people would use] their position to get people into a squad; or in this case, get people left out of a squad. It is wrong and I don't like it and that is my beef with the selection of the ODI team," Simmons said.

Cameron and Pybus emerged as the principal figures the comments appeared to be directed at. Simmons would later describe a relationship that had deteriorated to pure email communication in the case of Pybus, and none at all with the board president since Simmons' comments and the subsequent WICB investigation. Not even his delivering a World T20 title in India in April was enough to melt the icy waters.

Tell-it-like-it is Simmo had struck again, speaking in public about the real state of affairs. Maybe this was another instance where he was not toeing the corporate line.

In one of his last interviews, after the Test series with India ended in farcical fashion at the Queen's Park Oval in August, Simmons also spoke about his frustration at cricket matters that were, in his opinion, not being addressed.

"There's a lot of things that I've asked for, and it's not coming to fruition. I've asked for coaches to meet twice, maybe three times a year, and discuss cricket. We need to make sure that whatever we are doing upstairs is going down to everybody. If we don't have the same objective, then we spin it up in muddles. I think that's lacking."

Simmons has always been a team player, so the pattern of public outbursts of discontent that emerged over the last 12 months meant that for him, things behind the scenes had become unbearable. To use a Caribbean expression, it was a case of "water more than flour". For Simmons, cricket was not winning.

AFRO wrote:LOL you give me jokes howzdat . As for Andre...that greedy skunt well and truly entrenched into the t20 circus now, to the point where he's turning down a chance to play tests....and his loss is now Carlos Brathwaite's gain.

mikesiva wrote:

AFRO wrote:LOL you give me jokes howzdat . As for Andre...that greedy skunt well and truly entrenched into the t20 circus now, to the point where he's turning down a chance to play tests....and his loss is now Carlos Brathwaite's gain.

Well, Carlos has now decided he wants a piece of Andre's action....

No central contract for me, thank you very much!