Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents skip­per Ja­son Hold­er may have in­ad­ver­tent­ly giv­en Trinidad and To­ba­go-born coach Phil Sim­mons a great en­dorse­ment for the West In­dies job dur­ing the team’s Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League ti­tle cel­e­bra­tions at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my on Sat­ur­day night.

Speak­ing dur­ing the award cer­e­mo­ny af­ter his team beat the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors by 27 runs to lift their sec­ond CPL ti­tle, Hold­er cred­it­ed Sim­mons, a for­mer West In­dies all-rounder, for the team’s suc­cess.

“Sim­mons is out­stand­ing. I re­al­ly en­joy work­ing with him. I see him like a fa­ther,” Hold­er said. (See page A40)

“The team is ex­cep­tion­al. We all sit to­geth­er and talk crick­et. Hard to sin­gle out peo­ple—(Har­ry) Gur­ney was ex­cep­tion­al, JP (Du­miny) was out­stand­ing, (Ah­s­ley) Nurse, (Ray­mon) Reifer spe­cial per­for­mances. I’m re­al­ly hap­py for Hay­den Walsh Jr.

“I want to say spe­cial con­grats to Shoaib (Ma­lik) and Jo­han Botha, they had an out­stand­ing sea­son, but tonight, we de­served to win. Thanks to Trinidad crowd for com­ing us to sup­port de­spite us beat­ing their team in the qual­i­fi­er. Hope­ful­ly, next year will be big­ger and bet­ter.”

Speak­ing about the team’s vic­to­ry over the pre­vi­ous­ly un­beat­en War­riors, who had a run of 11 straight wins head­ing in­to the fi­nal, he said, “We had be­lief. Cred­it must go to every play­er. Coach­ing staff ex­cel­lent. (Jonathan) Carter was ex­cep­tion­al. In the first qual­i­fi­er, I told him to ex­press him­self. He was un­der scruti­ny and he showed that he can go deep­er with his crick­et­ing skills.”

Carter won the Play­er of the Match ti­tle, as his un­beat­en 50 steered the Tri­dents to what proved to a win­ning 171 for six tar­get which the War­riors could not reach. Carter too may have giv­en Sim­mons his vote for the Windies job dur­ing his award cer­e­mo­ny con­tri­bu­tion.

“This is a very proud mo­ment,” he said.

“When you have a friend and cap­tain like Ja­son, he gives you the all-clear to do what you have to do. Him and coach Sim­mons have been in­spi­ra­tional. Thank you Jase, thank you Phil.”

Sim­mons is one of three coach­es who are in the fi­nal short­list for the West In­dies coach­ing job. The oth­ers are for­mer leg­endary West In­dies open­er Desmond Haynes and Floyd Reifer, who was the team’s in­ter­im coach dur­ing the ICC World Cup ear­li­er this year.

Hay­den Walsh Jr, who fin­ished as the lead­ing CPL wick­et-tak­er with a haul of 22, was in tears as he was al­so named Play­er of the Sea­son. He thanked his team­mates and paid trib­ute to his fa­ther Hay­den Walsh, who died of a heart at­tack in 2010.

“I have no words right now. Worked hard and I need to thank the Almighty for bring­ing me this far. I’ve been work­ing for years. I’ve been get­ting tips all over but this has fi­nal­ly paid off. Every­thing goes to my (late) fa­ther. I think about him every day.”

Ama­zon War­riors skip­per Shoaib Ma­lik was gra­cious in de­feat, his side’s fifth in as many trips to the CPL fi­nal.

“First of all, I want to con­grat­u­late Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents, es­pe­cial­ly lat­er in the tour­na­ment. Sec­ond of all, we missed the trick af­ter ten overs when we were 79 for 3. We missed the trick of not ro­tat­ing the strike,” Ma­lik said.

“Next year maybe. I would say Carter’s in­nings and Nurse’s part­ner­ship with him was very cru­cial. In the last overs, mo­men­tum went to their side. When some­one like King is in form, we had high ex­pec­ta­tions from him, but as I said be­fore, we missed the trick around the 10-over mark. Want to say thanks to the crowd. With­out you, we all are noth­ing. Want to thank my team-mates. We fought very hard. We know it’s dis­ap­point­ing but to­mor­row is a new day. Go well guys.”