West Indies Cricket Fans

WICB favours Arthur as new coach


By Vinode Mamchan


Tuesday, August 19, 2014.

Ottis Gibson no longer in charge of the West Indies cricket team.

Just days after the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) changed the regional selection panel, they continued their house cleaning yesterday by removing Ottis Gibson as coach of the regional side.

The former all-rounder, who played two Tests and 15 One-Day internationals for the Windies, served England as bowling coach from late 2007 until he came back home to take charge of the regional unit in February 2010.

Information reaching the T&T Guardian is that he was likely to be replaced by for the former South Africa and Australia coach Mickey Arthur. The South African, Arthur recently finished his duties with the Jamaica Tallawahs in the Limacol Caribbean Premier League T20 tournament.

WICB Cricket operations director Richard Pybus met with Gibson after a string of poor performances from the regional side. The two did not see eye to eye on many matters and in the end the WICB directors were made aware of the feelings of both Pybus and Gibson.

The directors held a teleconference over the weekend and a decision was made to terminate the services of Gibson and the hunt was then on for a new coach. With the West Indies due to play Bangladesh from tomorrow in Grenada in a three-match, two-Test and lone T20 series, a coach was needed immediately and Pybus met with Arthur at the Hyatt Regency in St Kitts.

It is understood that although all terms have not been worked out, Arthur will take charge for the Bangladesh series. Gibson’s contract was not up for renewal, since he renewed his contract last year. It was for a period of three years and due to end in February 2016.

At the time of renewing the contract, WICB chief executive officer Michael Muirhead said: “Ottis has added significant value to the development of the West Indies team during his tenure and we are delighted to have secured his services for another three years.” “Most notably is that he led the implementation of a system of professionalism within the team unit and curbed the negative results, which we were experiencing with some frequency. There have also been clear successes under his stewardship from 2010 to date. These include, most notably, having coached the team to the World Twenty20 title, the team showing consistent improvements in the other formats, the reintegration of players into the team unit and the achievement of the set goals as outlined in the WICB Strategic Plan 2011-2016,” Muirhead said.

The West Indies continue to struggle in the Test and ODI formats and this has prompted many changes under new president Dave Cameron.

Darren Sammy was removed as ODI captain and replaced by Dwayne Bravo, while the St Lucian was also replaced as Test captain by Denesh Ramdin. Sammy has held on to his post as T20 captain. Recently the changes continued with former Test captain Clive Lloyd replacing Clyde Butts as chief selector, while Eldine Baptiste and Courtney Walsh were also made selectors. Making way for them was Robert Haynes, while Courtney Browne was been sent to deal with youth selection and women’s cricket.

Gils wrote:dunce,

You backed Gibson for 4 years, when you were told he will do the team no good, by any and all those with the patience to explain it to you.

But today he's a " pretender ", so how long, exactly, did it take you to arrive at that conclussion.

mikesiva wrote:Forward? This looks like "backward" to me...back to the colonial era.

Frank Worrell's legacy is being rolled back....

Arthur directs his blundering Test batsmen to training camp

December 15, 2011


by Chris Barrett


"We're going to practise against the swinging ball" ... Mickey Arthur

BATTING camps are generally reserved for schoolboy and junior cricketers not the likes of Ricky Ponting, Australia's greatest swinger of the blade since Bradman.

Yet that is exactly what is in store for Australia's batsmen after the calling of a three-day camp in Melbourne in the lead-up to the Boxing Day Tests against India.

Ponting will be joined by Test captain Michael Clarke, Michael Hussey, Brad Haddin as well as Dan Christian, Shane Watson and possibly Shaun Marsh in the MCG nets from next Tuesday.

They will be facing bowling machines that will simulate the deliveries of tall Indian seamer Ishant Sharma and others. Up in Canberra, meanwhile, David Warner, Phillip Hughes and Usman Khawaja will be in action for a Chairman's XI, facing the real thing.

Clarke and Warner aside, Australia's batsmen have not been in the finest of touch of late, capitulating infamously for 47 in Cape Town last month and playing a central part in an embarrassing seven-run defeat to New Zealand in Hobart on Monday.

The Melbourne batting summit, coach Mickey Arthur said, is simply being arranged to sharpen the focus on the headline act of the summer. ''What we're going to do at the batting camp is we're going to talk about the Indian bowlers, we're going to set up bowling machines a la Ishant Sharma, guys like that,'' he said.

''We're going to practise against the swinging ball and get our basics right before Boxing Day. There's no major reconstruction of anyone's technique - it's literally getting our guys thinking about the Test match, thinking as a group and honing our four-day skills to get the guys best prepared to play on Boxing Day. We're not reshaping anybody's technique or anything.''

Several of the camp attendees will play for their Big Bash League teams beforehand, including wicketkeeper Haddin, who will captain the Sydney Sixers in the first game of the tournament at the SCG tomorrow night.

The relationship of Cricket Australia's new Twenty20 competition with the upcoming Test series is a major talking point and there was a pointed reference from Arthur about the subject when he discussed the batting camp last night.

''It's just to get our unit of batters that we see playing in the Test match some sort of first-class batting practice without their techniques being compromised playing Twenty20 cricket,'' he said.

Among those who will not be playing in the BBL is Watson, whose continuing recovery from a hamstring injury rules him out of the Sixers' match against Matthew Hayden's Brisbane Heat and leaves him in doubt for Boxing Day.

He will not bowl even if selected for the first Test but yesterday endorsed the concept of a batsman's get-together, particularly as a vehicle to combat swing bowling, a weapon New Zealand used to great effect at Bellerive Oval.

''No doubt swing bowling [is] very hard to face … high-quality swing bowling is a big challenge, especially if the ball is moving late,'' Watson said.

''I'm not sure if it's a problem for Australian batsmen, it's a problem for cricketers in general. No doubt there have been times when we've had collapses when the ball is swinging around and seaming around, but other teams … are having challenges as well.''

Watson said Australia's batsmen would have been working diligently on preparing individually for the vagaries of the Indian attack, regardless of whether a camp was call or not.

''Guys would be doing everything possible to make sure their games are in the best place and make sure what happened against New Zealand doesn't happen again,'' he said.

mapoui2 wrote:fuming? to say the least

if they bring arthur in I am really done this time. there is no way in hell I can accept Mickey Arthur as west indian coach!

mikesiva wrote:Forward? This looks like "backward" to me...back to the colonial era.

Frank Worrell's legacy is being rolled back....