Vin­ode Mam­chan

The un­of­fi­cial ban on T&T bats­man Lendl Sim­mons has been lift­ed and he will re­turn to the West In­dies 'A' team which will tour Bangladesh at the end of this month. De­spite good per­for­mances on his last tour with the West In­dies se­nior team to Aus­tralia, Sim­mons failed to at­tract the at­ten­tion of the se­lec­tors and sources said he was the sub­ject of neg­a­tive re­ports from the team man­age­ment in Aus­tralia, which may have in­flu­enced the de­ci­sion to leave him out of the team. A frus­trat­ed Sim­mons told the Guardian on Fri­day, he had re­quest­ed a re­port from the WICB about his be­hav­iour on the tour, so he could as­sess his sta­tus in West In­dies crick­et. Up to yes­ter­day, he had not re­ceived it.

A source close to the sit­u­a­tion said yes­ter­day that Sim­mons should not wor­ry since he has been in­clud­ed in a 20-man squad to pre­pare for the se­ries in Bangladesh which will see the West In­dies 'A' in­volved in a tri-na­tion se­ries with 'A' teams from both South Africa and Bangladesh. Af­ter this se­ries the West In­dies 'A' will play two four-day match­es against the hosts. Sim­mons played well dur­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) T20 tour­na­ment in Eng­land last year but was sur­pris­ing­ly left out of the team for the tour­na­ment in the Caribbean lat­er this month. In the 2009 event, he scored 150 runs at an av­er­age of 30.00 with a best of 77. He al­so took six wick­ets at an av­er­age of 9.16 with a best of 4/19 and had a good econ­o­my rate of 6.0. In ad­di­tion, he took the most catch­es in a sin­gle match –three–which is still a T20 World Cup record. De­spite this, he is al­so out of the West In­dies 'A' team for a home se­ries against Zim­bab­we which starts on Fri­day in Grena­da.

Sim­mons said he was dis­ap­point­ed at not be­ing se­lect­ed for the World Cup. "I am tak­ing it in stride and just con­tin­u­ing my hard work in the nets. "Cur­rent­ly I don't know what is my po­si­tion. I no­ticed that they have se­lect­ed an 'A' team and I was al­so over­looked. No one has told me my po­si­tion at present with­in the set up of West In­dies crick­et. "I have heard that I got a bad re­port on the last tour of Aus­tralia and I am await­ing that re­port be­fore I say any­thing fur­ther. "At present I re­main very com­mit­ted to West In­dies crick­et and I am look­ing to work hard to get back in­to the team. I think I have a con­tri­bu­tion to make and I don't in­tend to take my op­por­tu­ni­ties for grant­ed." Sim­mons will join fel­low T&T play­ers Justin Guillen and Im­ran Khan for the se­ries. If Dar­ren Bra­vo and Adri­an Barath are ex­clud­ed from the West In­dies se­nior team for the se­ries against South Africa, they will al­so tour Bangladesh. West In­dies 'A' leaves on April 30 for Bangladesh.