Former West Indies legend, Andy Roberts has hit out against West Indies team management stating that time has come for Cricket West Indies (CWI) to part ways with coach Phil Simmons and white ball captain Kieron Pollard. "We have to start looking now to build. I don't see building with Pollard now," Roberts told Mason And Guest, a radio programme in the Caribbean the other day, and went to the extent of saying the captain may have done special things for his Twenty20 franchises but not for the West Indies.
"Not now (time for building the team with Pollard at the helm). I think we have gone past that stage. We have tried Pollard for two years, and we still don't have the success that we thought that we would have with Pollard. We need to (go) past him. We have to go past the T20 specialists that have not done anything for WI (West Indies). They may have done something special for the franchises that they played for not for WI. And this is not just now, this has been for a number of years," Roberts (71), who lives Antigua, said. Roberts was also fiercely critical of coach Simmons. "I don't know if he should have got the job in the first place. I don't think he has done anything that is working to keep him in his job. You first give him for two years and then assess his performance. He has been there for four years," Roberts, one of all-time greats of the game, said. The performance of West Indies team under Pollard has been dismal as the defending champions, failed to reach the knockouts of the Twenty20 World Cup last October-November. Roberts was the first Antiguan to play Test cricket for the West Indies, thus leading the way for many of his famous countrymen including Viv Richards, Richie Richardson and Curtly Ambrose. In 2009, Roberts was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.
