St Vincent PM unhappy over ‘shabby treatment’ of Sammy

Sammy was stripped of his captaincy of the West Indies T20 team and also dropped from the T20 squad for two matches set for later this month in Florida.

Sammy led the Windies to their second World T20 title earlier this year in India and publicly criticised the WICB for their lack of support. The decision by the WI selectors have not gone well with fans in St Lucia who have boycotted the third Test against India currently taking place.

In a letter to Courtney Browne, Chairman of Selectors of the WICB, Gonzalves stressed that Sammy deserved a certain level of respect for his yeoman service over the years.

The letter to Browne is as follows: “Mr Darren Sammy, the distinguished West Indian cricketer has advised me that, in your capacity as Chairman of the Selectors of the West Indies Cricket Team, you peremptorily informed him in a 30 second telephone conversation that he was being removed as the captain of the West Indies T-20 and that his recent performances did not merit him a place on the team for the upcoming T-20 matches against the touring Indian Team.

I find this shabby treatment of Mr Sammy to be unacceptable; indeed, I am sure all right-thinking persons are extremely dissatisfied at your unceremonious and summary dismissal of Mr Sammy as captain and player.

You simply cannot treat a former Captain of the West Indies Test Team and a successful captain of two successive World Cup T-20 Championships with disdain! Further, your sacking of Mr Sammy, and the manner of his termination, on the eve of a Test match in Mr Sammy’s country, St Lucia, to be played at the stadium which bears his name, display breathtaking insensitivity.

Elemental respect and common decency demand that once the Selectors had decided to remove Mr Sammy as captain and as player of the T-20 Team, he ought to have been accorded the courtesy of a dignified face-to-face meeting with you, and his support enlisted for the transitioning to the new captain.

Thus the leadership of the West Indies Cricket Board or Chairman of Selectors have no sense of professionalism or any inkling of what is right or wrong in professional/ industrial relations? The issue at hand relates not so much to the decision to remove Mr Sammy as Captain and player — though as a cricket fan I question it — but to your “modus operandi” and that of the West Indies Cricket Board.

I have followed you cricketing career with great interest and admiration.

I have always considered you to be a splendid son of our Caribbean civilisation.

In fact I was pleased at your elevation to the position of Chairman of Selectors. But you have disappointed me deeply.

I hope that you are not being unduly influenced by those whose leadership is akin to the proverbial plantation supervisor, in a brown cork hat, perched on a horse — a high horse seeking pitiable revenge on someone on account of some imagined transgression against “massa”.

It is not too late to make amends. To begin with, you and/or the President of the West Indies Cricket Board ought to apologise to Mr Sammy and the people of the Caribbean for your handling of this matter. Secondly, you and the President ought humbly to request that Mr Sammy assist the T-20 Team, in their preparation for the imminent matches against India in Florida.

Thirdly, if Mr Sammy consents, that he be accorded a role in shaping and massaging the transition to the new leadership and in facilitating renewal. Noble deeds are now required by the leadership of the West Indies Cricket Board and selectors to make manifest the possession of a redemptive grace.”