Vin­ode Mam­chan

West In­dies women's crick­et cap­tain Meris­sa Aguilleira was sacked by the se­lec­tors on the eve of the team's de­par­ture for its cur­rent four-match se­ries against Sri Lan­ka.

The se­lec­tion pan­el of Clive Lloyd, Court­ney Walsh, El­dine Bap­tiste and Court­ney Browne re­placed the T&T wick­et-keep­er with Ja­maican Stafanie Tay­lor, and al­though the news was re­layed to Aguilleira by pres­i­dent of the WICB, Dave Cameron, the de­ci­sion was not rat­i­fied by the WICB af­ter ob­jec­tions were raised by the T&T Crick­et Board, led by its pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath.

Ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial of the WICB in Ja­maica, Bas­sarath raised strong ob­jec­tions to the move, forc­ing the se­lec­tors to re­in­state the T&T play­er.

The of­fi­cial not­ed that Aguilleira's lead­er­ship came un­der scruti­ny fol­low­ing a se­ries of in-and-out per­for­mances by the team, and her own fail­ure as a play­er forced the se­lec­tors to look to Tay­lor. "The se­lec­tors thought that the per­for­mance of the team over the re­cent past was not what they ex­pect­ed and want­ed a change at the helm. Aguilleira's string of poor per­for­mances with the bat did not help her case."

It is un­der­stood that pres­i­dent of the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), Dave Cameron called Aguil­liera with the news three days be­fore the team for Sri Lan­ka was an­nounced. "She was in­formed that her ser­vices as cap­tain of the team were no longer re­quired and she would be re­placed by all rounder Tay­lor from Ja­maica."

Guardian un­der­stands that an up­set Aguil­liera spoke to the TTCB and her in­ter­est was rep­re­sent­ed by Bas­sarath who is al­so a di­rec­tor on the WICB.Di­a­logue took place be­tween the Bas­sarath and Cameron and in the end, the rec­om­men­da­tion by the se­lec­tors was not rat­i­fied and Aguil­liera was al­lowed to take the team to Sri Lan­ka.

When con­tact­ed on the mat­ter yes­ter­day, Bas­sarath said he had no com­ments to make and took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­grat­u­late the West In­dies team on their open­ing win against Sri Lan­ka.

Pri­or to the team leav­ing for Sri Lan­ka, long­stand­ing coach Sher­win Camp­bell was re­placed by Vas­bert Drakes af­ter he sent a What­sApp mes­sage to a play­er on the team about an­oth­er se­nior play­er. The mes­sage was passed on to the WICB, who found the mes­sage in poor taste and re­placed Camp­bell.

West In­dies women's crick­et team used a pa­tient bowl­ing and field­ing ap­proach then a sol­id mid­dle-or­der bat­ting per­for­mance to chalk up a de­serv­ing vic­to­ry in the first match of their sev­en card­ed on their cur­rent tour of Sri Lan­ka. All match­es are lim­it­ed-overs games with the first four 50-overs-per side af­fair and the last three T-20 match-ups.

Sri Lan­ka are cur­rent­ly lan­guish­ing in the 7th place with on­ly three points in six games while the West In­dies are cur­rent­ly at 5th po­si­tion with six points from same num­ber of match­es.The sec­ond match of the se­ries will be played to­day.