ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – New­ly-ap­point­ed West In­dies white-ball head coach Daren Sam­my said he was un­der no il­lu­sions about the enor­mi­ty of the task ahead of him in the role and be­ing a for­mer cap­tain of the team dur­ing a tur­bu­lent pe­ri­od may be a bless­ing.

The for­mer West In­dies cap­tain, 39, is prepar­ing for his first tours of du­ty with the One-day In­ter­na­tion­al squad un­der the lead­er­ship of Bar­ba­di­an wick­et­keep­er-bats­man Shai Hope – a se­ries of three ODIs against the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates next month in Shar­jah, and the crit­i­cal World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion tour­na­ment that fol­lows in Zim­bab­we.

With his lim­it­ed coach­ing back­ground on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage, and the lack of top cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, Sam­my’s cre­den­tials ap­pear not to make him the ide­al man for the job, but he said there were sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments when he was ap­point­ed West In­dies cap­tain al­most 15 years ago, and the re­sults can now speak for them­selves.

“I ap­proach this role the same way like I did back in 2010 when I took on the cap­tain­cy role,” he said dur­ing a vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence on Fri­day, his first since be­ing ap­point­ed to the role.

“The first thing I did was to get down on my knees and start pray­ing for di­vine in­ter­ven­tion – the wis­dom need­ed for this role, the pa­tience need­ed, and the vi­sion to achieve the things that will make the fans and those who fol­low us proud.”

He said: “I un­der­stand the chal­lenges that come with this role, but in do­ing so, it’s not some­thing that scares me. I am quite ex­cit­ed about the chal­lenges be­cause of what I see we have and un­der­stand­ing the task at hand. I think that’s the most im­por­tant thing for me, and it’s not just about play­ing crick­et, it’s just how I live.

“Once I un­der­stand what the job re­quires, then I could now fo­cus on the things that I have to do and block out the noise be­cause I’ve had to do that through­out my play­ing ca­reer – block out the noise – but, yes, I see a sim­i­lar pat­tern, and it’s some­thing for which I think I’m even more pre­pared.”

Sam­my comes in­to the role af­ter play­ing for West In­dies in 38 Tests, 126 ODIs, and 68 Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­als be­tween 2004 and 2017.

He cap­tained the Caribbean side in 30 Tests, 51 ODIs, and 47 T20Is, in­clud­ing two T20 World Cup-win­ning teams in 2012 and 2016, and he has coached in the Caribbean Pre­mier League and Pak­istan Su­per League since pack­ing it in.

Sam­my said coach­ing was not some­thing to which he as­pired, so he nev­er pur­sued for­mal qual­i­fi­ca­tions at the high­est lev­el, but he said op­por­tu­ni­ties fell to him be­cause of the suc­cess he had dur­ing his play­ing ca­reer as a leader of men.

The St Lu­cia-born for­mer West In­dies all-rounder dis­closed he al­ready had a Lev­el 2 coach­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, which he com­plet­ed when he was a part of the MCC Young Crick­eters in Eng­land be­fore his in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer took root, and he has start­ed the work to ob­tain his fur­ther cre­den­tials.

He said what knowl­edge he may not have through for­mal coach­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, he had ob­tained through prac­ti­cal play­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, and he was now look­ing to shape the Caribbean side in­to a for­mi­da­ble fight­ing force.

“It was not some­thing I as­pired to do dur­ing my play­ing days… but I’m a work-in-progress,” he said. “I will not sit down here and tell you all is OK. I am aware of those things (be­ing said), and I un­der­stand the chal­lenges ahead of me.

“But I al­so be­lieve that the im­pact and ef­fect that I could have with this gen­er­a­tion right now, I will not let be­cause I don’t have a cer­tifi­cate stop me from tak­ing on the chal­lenges that I know that I am equipped to han­dle.”

Prepar­ing for the forth­com­ing tours, Sam­my said he al­ready had dis­cus­sions with Hope and try­ing to get a sense of what they hoped to achieve over the next few months on the road.

“We have spo­ken about the ba­sic stuff about the iden­ti­ty of our game, what iden­ti­ty we want to give to our crick­et,” he said.

“Hear­ing from him, hav­ing tak­en over, and him be­ing prob­a­bly the lead­ing bat­ter for our group now as cap­tain, what is his ex­pe­ri­ence in the dress­ing room, some of the things where we could im­prove. It’s been about him be­ing in the sys­tem and just get­ting to know how he thinks.”

CMC