Vin­ode Mam­chan

T&T bats­man Lendl Sim­mons has once again been side­lined from the West In­dies 'A' team for the tour of Bangladesh, start­ing on May 4. The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) re­leased the names of the play­ers for the tour yes­ter­day, and con­spic­u­ous by his ab­sence was the for­mer West In­dies all­rounder. A source at the WICB said Sim­mons and Ke­iron Pol­lard were orig­i­nal­ly among six T&T play­ers on the team. How­ev­er when the 14-man squad was re­leased yes­ter­day, nei­ther was named. "That team for Bangladesh has been changed sev­er­al times. It was changed based on play­er avail­abil­i­ty and it seemed the se­lec­tors could not have made up their minds as far as some of the play­ers were con­cerned." Pol­lard's ex­clu­sion was seen against the back­ground that he may be need­ed in the se­nior team for the ICC World Cup and the vis­it of South Africa which fol­lows.

Sim­mons, on the oth­er hand, ap­pears to be suf­fer­ing from the ef­fects of a de­ci­sion to seek an­swers con­cern­ing a re­port of his be­hav­iour on the Aus­tralia tour ear­li­er this year. Since then he has failed to be in­clud­ed in any of the teams se­lect­ed for West In­dies du­ty and he has called on the West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (WIPA) to seek an­swers on his be­half. An­oth­er T&T play­er Adri­an Barath has been ap­point­ed vice-cap­tain with T&T col­leagues Justin Guillen, Im­ran Khan and Dar­ren Bra­vo, al­so in the fi­nal squad.?Coach of the team Hen­der­son Springer told CMC said the team played well in the four-day match and the two T20 match­es against Zim­bab­we in Grena­da. "This tour of Bangladesh is an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for these young men to build on what they start­ed. The play­ers worked re­al­ly hard and got suc­cess. If they con­tin­ue they will get more suc­cess.

"We will have some play­ers join­ing the team who have al­ready played at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el–Nash, Barath, Bra­vo, Tonge and Bak­er–and the team will be able to ben­e­fit from their ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge. I am sure every­one will be try­ing to cre­ate an im­pres­sion and get el­e­va­tion to the high­est lev­el of the game. "We will be fac­ing dif­fer­ent op­po­si­tion in for­eign con­di­tions so we will have to make that ad­just­ment from very ear­ly. In any sport, the best per­form­ers are the ones who are able to make the ad­just­ment and per­form, so this will be an­oth­er per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty for these play­ers to demon­strate their abil­i­ty to face chal­lenges and over­come them."