‘I think Simmons has brought a lot of the defeats on himself’ – commentator Reds Pereira says Windies’ head coach should step down.

The West Indies won the first match of the three-match one-day series between New Zealand and West Indies by 05 wickets and took the lead in the series 1-0.

However, they lost the T20I series against New Zealand by 1-2 and the ODI series against India before that also lost by 1-4. Accordingly, veteran cricket analyst and commentator Joseph Reds Pereira demands that head coach Phil Simmons be sacked.

Pereira mentioned that if the players are not technically equipped to bowl short balls or spins, the failure will ultimately be in the hands of the coaching staff.

“The players don’t seem to be equipped, and when players aren’t technically equipped to play the short ball or spin, it points to the coaching staff. The only bright light in the last few days would be the leadership of Powell, who took over in place of Pooran.”

In the last few games, Jason Holder has been a starter as well as Devon Thomas at the top. Pereira believed that many of these defeats were due to Simmons and his naive decisions.

“If you look at Phil Simmons’ white-ball record, it really speaks for itself. I think he has brought a lot of the defeats on himself. We got to the point where Jason Holder was opening with Thomas, why were we resting Alzarri Joseph and Akeal Hosein?.”

And,

“It’s only in the last T20 game that we won, we actually played two spinners together, the batting order was all over the place, we have not seen improvement in either the batting or bowling and I don’t see Phil Simmons being retained after his contract ends.”

Many people and critics accuse one political camp of being too heavy. Perera’s view is that politics should be left aside as before and return to a formula that works.

“Forget the politics and reinstate (Vasbert) Drakes and (Esaun) Crandon who did a very good job when we defeated England in 2017.”

Also, he said about Phil Simmons’s Record,

“His track record hasn’t been good, it hasn’t worked. The records are there to be seen.”

However, he says a new batting and bowling coach and possibly a fielding coach should definitely be in place before the World Cup.

“We are now looking in the direction of Australia and there are a lot of questions to be asked about Phil Simmons and the coaching staff. We certainly need to look at a batting and bowling coach, and perhaps a fielding coach. In terms of going to Australia, I think the board has to be bold and realise that this hasn’t worked.”