grid: disabling user cell selection while retaining cell selection programmatically

SmartClient Version: v10.0p_2015-03-24/Enterprise Deployment (built 2015-03-24)

Hello, I'm trying to disable cell-level selection in a Grid:
canSelectCell: function (rowNum, colNum) {return false;}

and then, because the docs says about canSelectCell:
<If ListGrid.canSelectCells is set to true, this method will be called for each cell the user attempts to select. If it returns false, the cell will not be selected. >

I was hoping I could select cell programmatically:
grid.getCellSelection().selectCell(1,1)

but the cell doesn't get selected.

Actually I've verified that canSelectCell isn't called after the selectCell method call.
So, is it intended behavior or a bug?
Isn't it possible to achieve this behavior?