Vin­ode Mam­chan

The West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (Wipa) has tak­en up the fight for T&T bats­man Lendl Sim­mons, who is cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing tremen­dous pres­sure fol­low­ing his fall­out with the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB). Sim­mons' non-se­lec­tion to the West In­dies team, has left him on the side­lines and he has suf­fered fi­nan­cial­ly as a re­sult.

There have been calls from crick­et­ing of­fi­cials, pun­dits and the pub­lic at large for Sim­mons to be re-in­stat­ed to the West In­dies crick­et team.

A source close to the sit­u­a­tion says the WICB con­tin­ues to ig­nore the play­er's de­mands to find out which dis­ci­pli­nary rule he in­fringed.

The source not­ed that the sit­u­a­tion was get­ting out of hand, since Sim­mons' stan­dard of liv­ing has been ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed.

Sim­mons wrote the CEO of the WICB Dr Ernest Hillaire, ask­ing for an ex­pla­na­tion as to what he had done wrong. Sim­mons was un­der re­tain­er con­tract for the pe­ri­od 2009 to 2010 and ex­er­cised his op­tion con­tained in the re­tain­er un­der 'dis­pute res­o­lu­tion'. Un­der this clause, the CEO must re­spond with­in sev­en days of re­ceiv­ing the re­quest. How­ev­er ac­cord­ing to the source, Sim­mons has been ig­nored. "As a re­sult, Sim­mons' pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion has been dam­aged and he has been ham­pered in his ef­forts to ex­ploit oth­er com­mer­cial and busi­ness ven­tures and fu­ture em­ploy­ment." Wipa has now tak­en up the mat­ter and wrote to Hillaire, ask­ing him to ex­plain the rea­son be­hind the treat­ment met­ed out to Sim­mons. It is un­der­stood that the WICB wrote to WIPA and ex­plained that there was no re­port on Sim­mons nor any in­ves­tiga­tive re­port done by the WICB on the play­er.

Ac­cord­ing to the source: "Af­ter the board ex­plained there was no re­port on Sim­mons, they picked sev­er­al West In­dies se­nior and 'A' teams and Sim­mons was nev­er se­lect­ed. "WIPA is again pick­ing up the mat­ter for Sim­mons. They are say­ing the WICB has breached a num­ber of terms un­der the re­tain­er con­tract, as well as the mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) be­tween the board and the play­ers as­so­ci­a­tion." It is un­der­stood that in light off the breach­es, Wipa in now in­vok­ing the 'griev­ance pro­ce­dure' in ac­cor­dance with ar­ti­cle IX of the Re­tain­er Con­tract by virtue of which the CEO must meet with WIPA with a view to re­solv­ing all the is­sues.

"The re­sult of the West In­dies snub means the process they have reached is now me­di­a­tion. They can no longer have good faith ne­go­ti­a­tions and if me­di­a­tion fails, yet an­oth­er round of ar­bi­tra­tion be­tween the WICB and WIPA will take place." Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, WIPA pres­i­dent Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine con­firmed his or­gan­i­sa­tion has tak­en up the Sim­mons is­sue. "Yes we have tak­en up the is­sue of Lendl Sim­mons not be­ing al­lowed to avail him­self of the prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice. "We are al­so deal­ing with sim­i­lar mat­ters con­cern­ing Ramnaresh Sar­wan and Nars­ingh De­onar­ine."