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4 areas West Indies need to fix ahead of T20 World Cup | 4 key areas that West Indies need to fix vs Australia & ahead of the T20 World Cup
Blessed with so many dynamic players throughout the lineup, West Indies is T20 cricket’s powerhouse in the eyes of millions around the globe. Therefore, cricket fans were surprised by their defeat at the hands of a South African side under transition in their recent home series.
With the T20 World Cup around the corner, the defending champions need to address their issues with absolute immediacy. In this article, I am going to throw some light on four such issues they had in their latest T20 series against South Africa and need to work upon in their upcoming face-off against Australia.
Batting in the middle overs
Good batting in the middle overs sets the stage for a strong finish at the death in T20 cricket. It is a bit of a tricky phase, where the batting team needs to score at a good pace while not losing too many wickets at the same time.
One of the chief reasons for the defeat of the West Indies against South Africa was their poor batting in the middle overs. The West Indies side had a run rate of a mere 6.8 and lost 3.4 wickets on an average in the middle overs phase in the series. The average and SR of the West Indies batsmen in this phase was 16.94 and 106.66 respectively. 39.62% of deliveries were dots, and they took 8.70 balls to hit one boundary in this phase. These numbers justify their poor returns in the middle overs in the series, which they need to work on against the Aussies.
Bowling in the powerplay
As a bowling unit, you need to keep things tight and not let the batting team score easy runs in the first six overs of the game. This, in turn, can create pressure on the batsmen and they might get dismissed while manufacturing shots in order to release the pressure.
However, the Windies bowlers let the South African batsmen regularly enjoy good starts. They conceded 251 runs and were able to pick up only six wickets during the powerplay phase in the series, with their bowling average and SR in the PP 41.83 and 30 respectively. Their collective economy rate was a not-so-impressive 8.36. They should surely want to improve these numbers in their upcoming series.
Performance of frontline spinners
Their frontline spinners disappointed for the defending champions in their recent encounter against the visiting South Africans. Kevin Sinclair, Fabian Allen and Akeal Hosein conceded 173 runs and took only four wickets with a collective economy of 8.23 in the series. Their average and SR was 43.25 and 31.5 respectively, which shows that they were able to neither pick wickets nor control the flow of runs efficiently.
On the other hand, South African spinner Tabraiz Shamsi bowled exceptionally well on those tracks and turned out to be one of the major differences between the two sides. With the T20 World Cup scheduled in UAE, where the spinners are expected to play a big role with the progression of the tournament, West Indies should definitely look to work on their department of spin bowling.
Performance of the middle and lower middle order batsmen
Another thing that let the home side down in the series against South Africa was the performance of their middle and lower middle order batsmen. There were big names like Hetmyer, Pooran, Pollard, Russell and Holder, but nobody was consistent throughout the series.
The no. 4, 5, 6 and 7 batsmen of the Windies batting lineup had a collective batting average and SR of a mere 18.47 and 121.49 respectively. The monstrous hitters took 7.6 balls to hit a single boundary. This kind of ordinary collective performance was certainly the reason behind the failure of the West Indies team to chase thrice in the series.
Despite being one of the toughest T20I sides, I find these four reasons responsible for the defeat and expect them to make a grand comeback against the Aussies.
Written by Debashish Sarangi. Follow Debashish on Twitter today.