Given the current situation with the problems afflicting West Indies cricket, Queen’s Park manager Jeffrey Guillen is calling for the resignation of the entire West Indies Cricket Board (WICB).
On Monday, coach Phil Simmons was suspended for his public comments concerning the continued snubbing of Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard by the West Indies selectors for the ODI team.
Guillen who attended the WICB Town Hall meeting in Trinidad last week and asked the president of the WICB, why he didn’t resign after the Indian fiasco said: “We have reached a state in our cricket now where we are in serious problems and I have been calling for the president of the board to resign after India but I think the entire board should go now and let us start over with new men and implement the PJ Patterson report on the governance of West Indies cricket.
“Our problems being faced today was in the making for the last 20 years and this is because of the weak governance structures in the territorial boards. We have people who I think can do much better in administering West Indies cricket, let us give them chance.
“It is going to be very difficult to get any changes to the set of the WICB but all cricket fans as stakeholders must do what it takes to be heard and apply pressure for change.”
Guillen added that chairman of selectors Clive Lloyd is not telling the real story as far as the omission of Pollard and Bravo is concerned. “We have a situation here where Lloyd is now in favour of Bravo and Pollard coming back into the ODI team.
He is not telling the real story because in January when they were overlooked for the South African series he said that Bravo was over the hill and Pollard was not performing well enough to be on the team.
“They have not played much cricket to prove otherwise to him and yet he comes now and supports the guys coming back in. This to me is very puzzling because all of a sudden Bravo it seems is not over the hill any more. There are a lot of unanswered questions concerning this situation and it is clearly a case of the players being victimised by the WICB for the aborted Indian tour.
“The board and Lloyd needs to come clean. We have a situation where Simmons speaks his mind because he has always had West Indies interest at heart. Here is a man who nearly died on the field for West Indies cricket, so we know where his heart lies. He is a hard working honest man and now he is suspended by these bunch of jokers. We are not going to take this easy, we are going to continue to make noise for accountability in West Indies cricket.”