Phil Simmons Biography
Phil Verant Simmons, professionally known as Phil Simmons, is a Trinidadian cricket coach and previously worked as a former cricketer. In his cricket career, he worked as an all-rounder and played as an opening batsman, a medium-fast bowler, and a slip fielder. Currently, he is working as the coach of the West Indies cricket team. In this blog we are going to tell you about the Phil Simmons, so read this blog carefully to get the complete information.
The early life of Phil Simmons
Simmons was born on 18 April 1963 in Arima, Trinidad, and Tobago which is a few miles outside Port of Spain. He is currently 58 years old. He lived near the house of a former West Indian Batsman, named Larry Gomes. He was skillful and good at several sports but was an outstanding cricketer so he chose cricket as a career. So he started playing for the regional side, East Zone. In 1983, he leaped to represent Trinidad and Tobago by taking the help and encouragement of Rohan Kanhai who was the coach at East Zone.
Domestic Career as a Cricketer
Phil has played for several first-class sides or domestic matches in the sport of cricket in the West Indies and England. In addition to this, he also played international cricket for the West Indian cricket team. In 1997 he was voted as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year.
He made several achievements in his domestic career. In first-class cricket, he scored 35.6 one with the bat and 28.68 with the ball. He acquired 1244 runs and took 56 wickets and 35 catches at the time of the 1996 season with Leicestershire, resulting in his team winning the Country’s Championship that year for only the second time in their history.
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International Career
He found the transition to Test cricket difficult and this is the reason he made only one century in his Test career. That was 110 at Melbourne when he played the West Indies 1992-1993 tour of Australia and finished his career in 1997 with a batting average of just 22.26 in 26 matches. Simmons proved himself more skilled at the international one-day game as he played a total of 143 ODI matches between 1987 and 1999. He made two half-centuries and made his ODI career at the 1987 cricket World Cup. Then at the 1992 World Cup, he played 4 matches and scored 110 against Sri Lanka. Then in December 1992 during his 8th match of the World Series Cup in Australia, he won the Man of the Match award because of his match-winning spell of 10 overs, 83 maidens, 4 wickets with an economy of 0.30 against Pakistan. Due to this, he holds the world record for most economical bowling performance in an ODI among those who completed their maximum quota of overs. The following year at Sharjah’s Champions Trophy tri-series, he was named player of the series as he scored three half-centuries and a total of 330 runs for the series. Then at the 1995 and 1996 World Cup series in Australia, he failed to impress and he was not selected for the 1996 World Cup. However, he was called before the 1999 world cup, where he played four matches including his final ODI match and after that, he retired.
Serious Injury on the field
On his debut tour of England, during the 1988 tour match against Gloucestershire, Phil faced a serious injury on the field. Due to bad light at Bristol, he was hit by a fastball from David Lawrence, directly on the head. Moreover, his heart stopped and he was taken to the Frenchay Hospital for emergency surgery. Later, he recovered fully.
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Phil’s Successful Coaching Career
After he retired from playing in 2002 he started on a successful coaching career. Then in 2004, he was appointed as the head coach of the Zimbabwe cricket team. But this didn’t work well as the Zimbabwe cricket union made him a scapegoat for all the problems on the Test side. Later, he was removed from the position. After the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup, he achieved the position of Adrian Birrell who was the coach of the Ireland National cricket team at that time. Being the coach of the Ireland cricket team he improved the status of the team in the world and his tenure included 224 matches. This made him the longest-serving coach in international cricket.
In March 2015, he accepted an offer to coach and to manage his native West Indies after the end of the 2015 World Cup. According to Michael Muirhead, he stated that “Phil has a proven ability to develop players while cultivating the team spirit and a winning culture. We have several young, talented players about whom he is excited to be coaching and we believe he is the right fit”. In 2016, he took the West Indies team to a historic second T20 World Cup victory in India. At that time, the previous top-ranking cricket team was in a period of certain struggles so he was tasked with bringing the team from near the bottom to the top 10 rankings and back to reputation.
In 2017, he was a batting coach for the Afghanistan National Cricket team, and later he was appointed as the head coach. In June 2019, he was appointed as the coach of the Brampton Wolves franchise team for the 2019 Global T20 Canada tournament. Then in October 2019, he was reappointed as the head coach of the West Indies team.
Phil’s Personal Life
Phil is a fan of Tottenham Hotspur, which is an English Football Club. He has a nephew named Lendl Simmons who is a West Indian Cricket Player.
He is a right-handed batsman and uses the technique of Right-arm medium in bowling.
The final words
So overall this article was about Phil Simmons who has started his career as a domestic cricketer and then played at the international level as well. After retirement, he became a cricket coach and he is well known as a Cricket coach among cricket fans and teams. He is presently serving as a Trinedian cricket coach.
