Andre Coley has been named as the Interim Head Coach of the West Indies Men’s team for the forthcoming tours of Zimbabwe and South Africa following a meeting of the Cricket West Indies (CWI) Board of Directors. CWI declared that Coley will supervise the two-Test tour of Zimbabwe from 28 January to 16 February, as well as the multi-format tour of South Africa, which contains two Tests, three One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and three T20 Internationals (T20Is) from 21 February to 28 March.
Simmons finished his lengthy tenure as coach of the Caribbean team when he resigned at the decision of the recent two-match Test series in Australia.
Coley joins the West Indies at a decisive time as they try to improve from a sequence of poor performances, one of which was their first-round eradication from the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in Australia.
The newly-appointed head coach offers a plethora of experience to the position as he previously served as the assistant coach for the national women’s team and worked as Simmons’ assistant during the successful run that led the West Indies to victory at the 2016 Men’s T20 World Cup.
Coley, who is currently the head coach of the CWI Academy programmed, recently assisted the Jamaica Tallawahs in winning the Caribbean Premier League in his capacity as an assistant coach.
“We welcome Andre back to the West Indies dressing room and with his wealth of knowledge of the game, player-management skills, dedication and hard work, as well as attention to detail, we know he is well equipped. He is a highly experienced coach who has functioned at every level within the CWI High-Performance Pathway. This has prepared him for the job at hand and we expect he will again approach this new role with the same vigour and zeal which have characterized his time in the CWI coaching system and has earned the respect of players and everyone who he has interacted with,” said Adams as quoted by ICC.
