Prime Minister of St.Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr Ralph Gonsalves has written a scathing letter to the WICB Chairman of Selectors, Courtney Browne over the firing of St.Lucia’s Daren Sammy.
Prime Minister Gonsalves told Browne that he finds this shabby treatment of Sammy to be unacceptable; and that all right-thinking persons are extremely dissatisfied at the unceremonious and summary dismissal of Sammy as Captain and player. Dr Gonsalves said Browne cannot treat a former captain of the West Indies Test Team and a successful captain of two successive World Cup T-20 Championships with such disdain! Further, the sacking of Sammy, and the manner of his termination, on the eve of a Test Match in his country, to be played at the stadium which bears his name, display breathtaking insensitivity.
Dr Gonsalves said elemental respect and common decency demand that once the Selectors had decided to remove Daren 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, and his support enlisted for the transitioning to the new captain. The Vincentian Prime Minister went on to ask whether 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.
Dr Gonsalves told Courtney Browne that he was pleased at Browne’s elevation to the position of Chairman of Selectors, but now he is deeply disappointed. Gonsalves said he hoped that Browne is not being unduly influenced by those whose leadership is akin to the proverbial plantation supervisor, in a brown cork hat, perched on a high horse seeking revenge against someone on
account of some imagined transgression against “massa”.
It is not too late to make amends, Dr Gonsalves concluded, suggesting that Browne and/or the President of the WICB apologize to Daren Sammy and the people of the Caribbean for the handling of this matter. Secondly, a request should be made for Sammy to assist the T-20 Team, in their preparation for the matches against India in Florida.
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