The Independent Voice of West Indies Cricket
Darren Sammy decided to call time on his Test career in the wake of his sacking as West Indies Test captain. The 30-year-old all-rounder wants to move on and concentrate solely on the ongoing IPL and upcoming international limited-overs assignments. In an interview with The Indian Express, Sammy explained his decision to quit the longest format and also spoke about how IPL has been helping him and other cricketers become better players.
This past week the West Indies cricket selectors named a new captain of the region’s team for Test Cricket, which despite frequent obituaries remains the soul of the game. But the news was hardly about the new captain; it was more about the one who was fired -- Darren Sammy. This was inevitable as Sammy is one of four significant captains in the almost nine decades of West Indies participation in Test Cricket—the others being Frank Worrell, Clive Lloyd and Vivian Richards. Note, I say significant; not best. What they all have had in common is that they assumed the captaincy and presided over the team at critical eras in Caribbean Post-Colonial history -- Independence, Black Power and Radical Nationalism and Globalization/Structural Adjustment.
Furniture giants Courts Guyana Inc. has once again joined hands with the Berbice Cricket Board (BCB) and the Berbice Chamber of Commerce and Development Association (BCC&DA) to host the Independence T20 Cup to be held on May 25 at the historic Albion ground.
At a simple ceremony held recently at the New Amsterdam Branch of Courts Guyana Inc., Branch Manager Stanley McKenzie, handed over the sponsorship cheque to Alisa Moonsee, one of the tournament secretaries, in the presence of other staff members.
He said his company was very happy with what it saw last year and readily renewed the sponsorship for 2014. McKenzie indicated that the entity believes in quality and saw quality in the way the tournament was conducted.
Darren Sammy, the West Indies all-rounder who announced his retirement from Test cricket yesterday, has said his decision wasn't a fallout of his being replaced as captain by wicketkeeper-batsman Denesh Ramdin.
Sammy, whose decision to call time on his Test career came hours after he was axed as captain, said he had been thinking about it for a long time. "After the New Zealand series [which West Indies lost 2-0] I sat down with the team management and the selectors and then told myself that we cannot continue like this. Probably my career is on the line. I was very serious about it," Sammy told ESPNcricinfo.
The selection committee of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), or rather, the Board itself, has finally seen the light, writes Tony Becca in the Jamaica Gleaner
After nearly four years of trying 'a thing', the Board has come to the conclusion that that is not the way to go, that a team of Test cricketers, of cricketers who are generally not so good, is made up of 11 players, and not 10 players and another, especially if the other player is not an exceptional captain, or leader.
In 2010 when the West Indies were the beating stick of the world and after they had gone through the likes of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Darren Ganga, Chris Gayle and Dwayne Bravo, the Board called up all-rounder Darren Sammy to do the job and he did it, or attempted to do it, for almost four years.
The selection of Sammy was questioned by many because he could not make the Test team as a batsman or as a bowler and neither could he make it as an all-rounder.