‘Changes a must'

Pat Rousseau says the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) will continue to make personnel changes til we get the thing working efficiently.

And he rejected suggestions that repeated shifts would be a disruptive influence on the team.

Generally, and not just with the team and the board, we have to make changes til we get the thing working efficiently, he said, speaking two days after manager Ricky Skerritt was dismissed less than half-way through a three-year contract through an e-mail from WICB chief executive Gregory Shillingford.

I have no problem with that and if what is going to be suggested is that we perpetuate positions when we're not satisfied, mainly because changes could be disruptive, then you won't get any support from me on that.

Rousseau, the Jamaican attorney who has been WICB head since 1996, declined to give specific reasons for Skerritt's dismissal because he understood it would be the subject of litigation.

All he would say was that it was based on performance. Skerritt was manager of the team for four tours, the president noted. We do a debriefing and assessment at the end of every tour so he has been assessed four times. The decision is not whimsical, he added. It is based on an assessment of performance.

Skerritt's fate was decided by Rousseau and WICB vice-president Clarvis Joseph after a lengthy debriefing session in Antigua last week on the South Africa series. It came three weeks prior to a tour of Zimbabwe and Kenya that starts July 17. In Skerritt's absence, Reg Scarlett, the former Jamaica and West Indies off-spinner who is the WICB's development officer, is in charge of the pre-tour camp that got underway in Trinidad yesterday and will run for 10 days.

A new manager would have to be appointed within a few days, Rousseau said.

The appointment was so urgent that it could not wait until the WICB's annual general meeting at the Accra Hotel here on Friday and Saturday, he added.

We'll call around members and then appoint, he said. We might be able to dismiss on review but we can't appoint a manager without clearing it with the board. We've never done it and we're following the pattern.

The issue is certain to be one of the main topics for discussion at the AGM with some WICB directors and board representatives expressing surprise at the turn of events. Skerritt, a 44-year-old Kittitian business executive, was appointed in March 2000 in succession to former Test captain Clive Lloyd.

He held the position for the series at home against Zimbabwe and Pakistan last year, in England last summer, away to Australia between November and February last and at home against South Africa between March and May. The West Indies won the first two but were beaten in the other three.

During Skerritt's tenure, Jimmy Adams was replaced as captain by Carl Hooper, Jeffrey Dujon was removed as assistant coach and psychologists Dr. Rudi Webster and Joe Hoad came and went.