Vin­ode Mam­chan

Eng­lish­man Richard Py­bus is no longer the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) di­rec­tor of crick­et. The po­si­tion has been giv­en to for­mer West In­dies bats­man Jim­my Adams.

Adams, a for­mer Ja­maican crick­eter, who rep­re­sent­ed the West In­dies as play­er and cap­tain dur­ing his ca­reer, will now have as his head coach the Aus­tralian Stu­art Law, who takes up the po­si­tion which was left va­cant by T&T's Phil Sim­mons af­ter he was fired by the WICB back in Sep­tem­ber.

The de­ci­sion to fill these two crit­i­cal po­si­tions were tak­en at the week­end at the WICB's fi­nal quar­ter­ly meet­ing which took place in St Maarten.

Py­bus, 52, who cre­at­ed waves in the Caribbean with some of his de­ci­sions did not seek to have his con­tract re­newed and the di­rec­tors of the board saw it a good fit for Adams.

The Ja­maican quit his po­si­tion at Kent ear­li­er this year af­ter serv­ing five sea­sons be­tween 2012 and Oc­to­ber 2016 as coach, to make him­self avail­able for ei­ther the po­si­tion of di­rec­tor of crick­et or that of head coach of the West In­dies team.

Py­bus of New­cas­tle will stay on for a while to ease Adams in­to the po­si­tion as he has penned a 20-point plan for the de­vel­op­ment of crick­et in the Caribbean.

Law who played one Test and 54 one day in­ter­na­tion­als for Aus­tralia was the for­mer coach of Sri Lan­ka and Bangladesh. Ear­li­er this year, he was the first choice of the Pak­istan Crick­et Board (PCB) as their head coach but turned down the po­si­tion, ex­press­ing his in­abil­i­ty to join the team im­me­di­ate­ly.

In Sep­tem­ber the po­si­tion be­came va­cant when Sim­mons was fired by the board. Sim­mons was ini­tial­ly ap­point­ed on a three-year con­tract in March 2015. His reign en­com­passed the West In­dies' re­mark­able T20 World Cup tri­umph.

How­ev­er, de­spite that high point, the off field re­la­tion­ship be­tween Sim­mons and the WICB of­ten bub­bled be­neath the sur­face, most no­tably in 2015, when he com­plained about the se­lec­tion of the squad for a one-day se­ries against Sri Lan­ka.

He was sus­pend­ed af­ter com­plain­ing of "in­ter­fer­ence" in the se­lec­tion process, be­fore even­tu­al­ly be­ing re­in­stat­ed af­ter a rep­ri­mand. Sim­mons' suc­cess in the T20 are­na how­ev­er was not mir­rored in Test crick­et. Dur­ing his reign the West In­dies won on­ly one of 14 Tests, with the most re­cent de­feats com­ing in a 2-0 se­ries loss against In­dia.

Law, 48, Queens­land's all-time lead­ing run scor­er in first class crick­et, will have as his first as­sign­ment to lead the re­gion­al team in Feb­ru­ary next year when Eng­land vis­its the Caribbean for a se­ries of three one day in­ter­na­tion­als. The board will be look­ing to him for im­me­di­ate re­sults as the West In­dies team is now in ninth po­si­tion in the ICC ODI rank­ings and needs to be in the top eight by Sep­tem­ber this year, or face a play off to get in­to the ICC 2019 World Cup in Eng­land.