ST JOHN’S, Antigua– Cricket West Indies (CWI) announces the appointment of Monty Desai as the new West Indies Men’s Batting Coach, on a two-year contract. Desai is a highly-respected and experienced coach who has worked with several teams at the franchise level as well as with several international teams.
He worked with Canada, as their Head Coach at the ICC World Cricket League Division 2 and Afghanistan as their Batting Coach at the ICC Cricket World Cup qualification tournament in 2018. More recently, he also worked as Batting Coach for the United Arab Emirates at the ICC T20 World Cup qualification event.
Desai joined the West Indies ahead of the start of the T20 International Series against India, which bowls off on Friday, December 6 at the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium in Hyderabad.
David Warner, last Saturday, became the seventh Australian to score a Test triple-century during the second Test against Pakistan in Adelaide.
The left hander surpassed Don Bradman and Mark Taylor's highest scores of 334 and looked set to go past the highest individual Test score of 400 set by the West Indies great Brian Lara before skipper Tim Paine declared the innings with Warner unbeaten on 335.
Coincidentally, Lara was also in Adelaide on the day Warner reached his maiden Test triple-century and was expecting the opener to break his record. The legendary batsman revealed that he was looking forward to congratulate Warner in person had the Australian surpassed his highest score, just as Gary Sobers had done when he achieved the feat.
West Indies Test captain Jason Holder wants his side to be among the best in the world by July 2021 and goes further to expect a top-five ranking by then.
There was a time when that kind of brash talk would have been expected from a West Indian but not given the kind of lean times the region has had with bat and ball in the last 25 years.
Holder was speaking after the West Indies won its first Test match under new coach Phil Simmons in Lucknow, India, beating Afghanistan by nine wickets.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) started the World Test Championship on August 1, 2019, creating a league for the top nine Test-playing teams over two years with the top two teams qualifying for a World Test League Championship Final. The World Test Championship begins again in July of 2021.
As the 2019 regional cricket season comes to a close with just the Super50 Cup to be decided, there is trouble brewing among the franchise players, who are calling out Cricket West Indies (CWI) for the late payment of retainer salaries, a problem, which they claim has existed for about a year.
CWI president Ricky Skerritt admitted to The Sunday Gleaner that the problem exists, but warned that current cash flow issues with the organisation meant that there was no short term solution.
There are currently 90 players across the six franchises under regional retainer contracts, which range from A to development categories.
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad - West Indies Emerging Players are the 2019 Colonial Medical Insurance champions, after securing a commanding 205 run victory over Leeward Islands Hurricanes.
Led by a captain's man of the match all-round performance by Yannic Cariah who had tremendous assistance from his team mates, the Emerging players triumph makes it the second year in a row that a development side heavily influenced by coach Floyd Reifer has won the competition, following the 2018 victory by Combined Campuses and Colleges (CCC) Marooners.
Victory shows the future is bright for West Indies cricket,'' said coach Floyd Reifer to CWI Media and the press.
“It’s all (now) about putting these guys in a high performance program to work on their skills where they can learn to be good professionals and athletes before becoming good cricketers. This is very crucial.”
