Vin­ode Mam­chan

The West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (WIPA) has writ­ten to the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) ask­ing it to clear the air over a re­port, which ap­peared ex­clu­sive­ly in the T&T Guardian, that the re­gion­al board kept T&T bats­man Lendl Sim­mons out of the West In­dies teams, since the Aus­tralian tour in Jan­u­ary. WIPA pres­i­dent Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine con­firmed his As­so­ci­a­tion has asked for the re­port which sources say was re­spon­si­ble for a de­ci­sion not to se­lect the T&T all­rounder for the up­com­ing ICC T20 World Cup which starts at the end of the month in the Caribbean. Ram­nar­ine said yes­ter­day he met with Sim­mons to get his opin­ion on the sit­u­a­tion.

Ram­nar­ine said WIPA had read the Guardian re­ports about dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against Sim­mons. "The re­ports al­so in­di­cate that Sim­mons is un­aware of any neg­a­tive ac­tion against him. He is quot­ed fur­ther as stat­ing that he was dis­ap­point­ed at not hav­ing been se­lect­ed for up­com­ing tour­na­ments in­volv­ing West In­dies teams." WIPA al­so asked the board to ver­i­fy the con­tents of the re­port from the Aus­tralian tour and to say if Sim­mons was ac­cused of in­dis­ci­pline. The let­ter read: "We would be grate­ful if you would in­form as to the ac­cu­ra­cy of the re­ports men­tioned. If, in­deed, they are cor­rect, was Lendl in­formed of the com­plaints lev­elled against him and giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to them? Nat­ur­al jus­tice dic­tates that he should not be de­prived of the chance to de­fend him­self, es­pe­cial­ly since his ca­reer could be at stake."

"It would, there­fore, be much ap­pre­ci­at­ed if you would brief us on the sit­u­a­tion re­lat­ing to Lendl Sim­mons and pro­vide us with any in­ves­tiga­tive re­port done by the WICB re­lat­ing to him and its find­ings." A frus­trat­ed Sim­mons told the Guardian last Fri­day he had re­quest­ed a re­port from the WICB about his be­hav­iour on the tour to as­sess his sta­tus in West In­dies crick­et. Up to yes­ter­day, he had not re­ceived it. A source close to the sit­u­a­tion re­vealed ear­li­er in the week 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. 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."