Shallow: No plans to sack coach Sammy

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC):

Despite admitting he was disappointed after the West Indies failed to win the recently concluded ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, Cricket West Indies (CWI) President Dr Kishore Shallow has revealed that there is no immediate intention to fire head coach Daren Sammy.

The West Indies were seeking to win their first title in 10 years and third overall, but were eliminated at the Super Eights phase of the competition for the second successive T20 World Cup.

While several questions have been raised regarding Sammy’s future as all-formats head coach, Dr Shallow said a decision would most likely be made after his contract expires after the ICC Cricket World Cup in 2027.

“At this point Daren has a contract that runs beyond this World Cup. His contract goes up until at least the 50-over World Cup, that is the current status,” Dr Shallow revealed during an interview on iSports i95.5 FM on Thursday.

However, the president said an assessment would be done regarding the regional team’s performance at the T20 World Cup in India.

Very disappointed

Dr Shallow acknowledged that he was disappointed the West Indies didn’t achieve their goal of winning the tournament.

“We are still continuing to have conversations. We plan to have a conversation, as is normal after these major tournaments, where we’ll have an assessment done and see what went wrong.

“Ultimately we didn’t go to the World Cup to reach the Super Eights. We went to win the World Cup and we didn’t win so we can’t say that we are comfortable with that. I’m certainly very disappointed that we didn’t win,” Dr Shallow said.

“However, I certainly took note of the fact that we showed some improvements in all areas; we won five out of seven matches, and the matches that we won we did so convincingly and barring the one game against South Africa we really competed.

“So, it was a credible performance, but still we wanted to win, and I suspect that if you speak to Sammy, Shai Hope or any other member of the team, they would tell you that they’re disappointed that we didn’t win. There’s work to be done and we will look at the reasons why we didn’t win the tournament and try to identify those areas for improvement going forward,” he added.