St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has called on the President of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), Dave Cameron and the Chairman of Selectors, Courtney Browne, to apologize for the shabby treatment meted out to former West Indies Twenty20 Captain Darren Sammy.
Sammy was stripped of his captaincy and also dropped from the Twenty20 squad for two matches against India set for later this month in Florida.
In a letter to the Chairman of Selectors Courtney Browne, Gonsalves stressed that Sammy deserved a certain level of respect for his yeoman service over the years.
Part of the letter stated: “Sammy has advised me that in your capacity as chairman of Selectors of the West Indies Cricket Team, you peremptorily informed him in a 30-second telephone conversation that he was being removed as the captain of the West Indies Twenty20 and that his recent performances did not merit him a place on the team for the upcoming Twenty20 matches against the touring Indian team.
“I find this shabby treatment of Mr. Sammy to be unacceptable, indeed, I am sure that all right-thinking persons are extremely dissatisfied at your unceremonious and summary dismissal of Mr. Sammy as captain and player. You simply cannot treat a former captain of the West Indies team and a successful captain of two successive World Cup Twenty20 Championships with disdain.
“Elemental respect and common decency demand that once the selectors had decided to remove Mr. Sammy as captain and as a player of the T20 team, he ought to have been accorded the courtesy of a dignified face-to-face meeting with you.” the letter said.
It added: “It is not too late to make amends. You and the president of the West Indies Cricket Board ought to apologize to Mr. Sammy.”
