Vin­ode Mam­chan

For­mer West In­dies Test play­ers Ot­tis Gib­son and Phil Sim­mons are in line to be­come the new coach of the West In­dies crick­et team. The top coach­ing po­si­tion for the re­gion­al team be­came va­cant af­ter Aus­tralian coach John Dyson was sacked by the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), well short of his con­tract ex­pir­ing. The for­mer Aussie Test bats­man's con­tract was due to end in No­vem­ber next year.

A source close to the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) told the Guardian the re­gion­al body is look­ing in­to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing ei­ther Bar­ba­di­an Gib­son or Trinida­di­an Sim­mons take up the po­si­tion. Gib­son is cur­rent­ly the bowl­ing coach for Eng­land, while Sim­mons is in charge of the Irish na­tion­al side. Ac­cord­ing to the source : "The WICB's di­rec­tors have short-list­ed Sim­mons and Gib­son. They are go­ing to ap­proach both to find out if they are in­ter­est­ed in the job. "The WICB will like to ap­point a coach with­in the next two months or so and hence the se­lec­tion process has start­ed."

As­sis­tant coach of the West In­dies team David Williams has been asked to take over as in­ter­im coach for the up­com­ing as­sign­ment, which is the Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy in South Africa. Dyson de­parts af­ter West In­dies' calami­tous Test and one-day se­ries de­feats to Bangladesh. West In­dies field­ed a se­vere­ly de­plet­ed team fol­low­ing a dis­pute be­tween the WICB and the West In­dies Play­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (WIPA) over con­tracts. Dyson as­sumed the post in 2007 from an­oth­er Aus­tralian, Ben­nett King, but was al­most im­me­di­ate­ly in the bad books of West In­dies fans when he could not at­tend their se­ries against Zim­bab­we.

Nev­er­the­less, Dyson made a pos­i­tive start when West In­dies beat South Africa at Port Eliz­a­beth - their first Test vic­to­ry since May 2005, and first out­side of the Caribbean in sev­en years. The Windies amassed a Test record of three wins, sev­en draws and nine de­feats dur­ing his tenure–cul­mi­nat­ing in four straight loss­es to Eng­land and Bangladesh–and a 9-25 win-loss ra­tio in the one-day in­ter­na­tion­al are­na. They lost nine of their fi­nal 10 com­plet­ed 50-over match­es against Eng­land, In­dia and Bangladesh. The West In­di­ans fared bet­ter in the 20-over for­mat, ad­vanc­ing to the se­mi-fi­nal of the World Twen­ty20 in June. But per­haps their great­est achieve­ment un­der Dyson was their 1-0 Test se­ries vic­to­ry over Eng­land in Feb­ru­ary; a re­sult that se­cured them the Wis­den Tro­phy for the first time since 1998.