With the West Indies still winless in Test cricket since Daren Sammy took over in April, pressure has increased for his sacking. However, Cricket West Indies (CWI) Director Dr Donovan Bennett doesn’t believe firing him will lead to any significant change in the team’s fortunes.
The Caribbean side ended 2025 with a 323-run defeat to hosts New Zealand at Bay Oval in Mount Maunganui on Sunday. West Indies had drawn the opening Test before falling to a nine-wicket defeat in the second contest — which meant they lost the three-match series 0-2.
The result in the first match at Hagley Oval, at the start of December, was the first time Sammy, a former West Indies captain, had avoided defeat as head coach of the Test team — after losing all matches at home against Australia in July and going down 0-2 away to India in October.
It’s the worst run by any West Indies coach in nearly a decade since Phil Simmons’ 11-match winless streak from 2015 to 2016.
However Bennett, who is also Jamaica Cricket Association president, said that removing Sammy would be pointless.
“Daren Sammy is not the problem — no West Indies coach is the problem. The problem is at the lower level — one, at the franchises and two, at the age group levels,” he told the Jamaica Observer.
“I hear a lot of calls about ‘Fire the coaches [but] that is not going to affect anything. You can’t blame Daren Sammy for what is happening in West Indies cricket right now. That is not him to be blamed.”
Bennett believes a coaching change will make little difference due to the region’s long-standing issues.
“How many coaches have we changed over the past 10 years? Maybe seven or eight coaches, right? We have brought coaches from Australia, we have brought coaches from all over the world, we have used our best coaches in the Caribbean, [yet] the results remain the same. So why are we still talking about changing the coach? Clearly, that cannot be the problem,” he said.
“The problem must be somewhere else. So let us start looking somewhere else to identify the real problem and not go to this quick fix thing about getting another coach, because you could bring the best coach in the world right now to the West Indies team [yet] it is not going to make a difference. The difference has got to take place much earlier than that.”
Bennett says greater focus must be placed on youth programmes in the region so as to start seeing success on the global stage.
“Once somebody has that muscle memory and has been trained and bent along a certain way, it’s very difficult to change them. West Indies will not improve significantly until we have a proper programme across the territories with our younger players to get them to not only to do the right technical things, but also to promote commitment to country and to region, et cetera,” he said.
“It has to be a holistic approach to change the mindset of these youngsters who are coming up so that when the time comes for them to showcase their skills, they have all the skills that they need to compete at the international level,” said Bennett
The Windies have won only five of their last 25 Tests, with the last coming away to Pakistan in a drawn two-match series in January under Sammy’s predecessor, Jamaican Andre Coley.
The regional side sits bottom of the 2025-2027 ICC World Test Championship with a mere four points.
The West Indies’ next Test series is scheduled to be in the summer, when Sri Lanka tour the Caribbean.
Jamaica Observer
