Conde Riley should resign and leave Simmons alone
there remains some dinosaurs in West indies cricket who will continue to spoil the good game as long as they remain in positions of authority.
One of them is Conde Riley, miraculously still the president of the Barbados Cricket Association. Riley’s latest outbursts are related to the campaigning of former Cricket West Indies president, Whycliffe Cameron, who now wants to run for chairman of the International Cricket Council, and needs the support of Cricket West Indies to do so.
Riley has always supported Cameron, even if what the latter does to West Indies cricket has an ugly look. So from that, one can deduce that it’s a situation of personal friendship being put before the good of West Indies cricket.
Now, Riley’s latest verbal garbage is a salvo against West Indies team coach, Phil Simmons, who was given time off to attend the funeral of his father-in-law in England last week and had to be placed in quarantine.
It must be quite stupid of Riley to be calling for the sacking of Simmons, or as he puts it, “the immediate removal” of the Trinidadian, while describing Simmons’ decision to attend the funeral as “inconsiderate and reckless”, a move which Riley felt would “endanger the lives” of the other members of the West Indies squad and officials. What rubbish! Isn’t this man stupid? Riley should
know that as long as the protocols are followed, which Simmons did, no problems will arise.
Riley just cannot get over the fact that his friend Cameron is no longer president of Cricket West Indies. And, of course, it was the Cameron administration, of which Riley was a part, that fired Simmons as head coach in 2015, with Simmons winning a wrongful dismissal case against Cameron’s men, and the now board was forced to pay him over US$300,000 in settlement fees.
So is it Simmons who should go, or Riley?
It was sad to see Sir Everton Weekes, that great Barbadian and West Indies batsman, with whom I shared many conversations over the years, depart this life last week. If Sir Everton had heard the latest garbage by Riley, he would lower his head in shame.
Barbados has, without question, produced the greatest of all West Indies cricketers. The island’s cricket administrators though, such as Riley, leave a lot to be desired, in terms of their thinking and general conduct.