Last Updated on 4 years ago by Charbel Coorey
Cricket News: Our batting was unprofessional – West Indies coach Phil Simmons | West Indies coach slams the state of West Indies’ batting
West Indies’ head coach Phil Simmons expressed disappointment at the team’s unprofessional batting display in the wake of their defeat to Scotland in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup on Monday. The men from Caribbean faltered for 118 whilst chasing 161 against the Scotsmen in Hobart. Simmons insisted that the bowling unit is putting the team in a positive position but the batsmen are letting them down regularly.
“I think the only world you can look for is ‘disappointed’. I think our batting – at least today – was definitely a bit unprofessional. We need to wake up and start being as professional as we can be, when we are batting. The bowlers seem to be working hard and putting us in good positions but the batters continue to falter,” Simmons explained, as reported by ESPNcricinfo.
Barring Kyle Mayers (20) and Jason Holder (36), none of the West Indian batsmen scored over 20 runs as the team slumped to a rather embarrassing collapse against the associate nation. Mark Watt struck thrice whereas Brad Wheal and Michael Leask picked up a couple of scalps each as the two-time World T20 Champions bundled out for 118 in the 19th over.
We need to calm down before preparing for Zimbabwe – Simmons
Simmons added that he needed to give some time to the dressing room to calm down before taking the prevalent issues up with them. The tactician bemoaned the increasing number of soft dismissals and reiterated that the batting unit needed to pay a lot of attention their wickets.
“I don’t know. I haven’t questioned the dressing room yet; let them calm down a little bit first. I need to calm down a little bit first before I go into the dressing room,” the head coach replied when asked about what went wrong in the chase.
He added, “There were too many soft dismissals. As batsmen, you have to pay a lot more attention to your wicket. Every time we play, we are up there with the run rate; it doesn’t matter who we are playing against. But we keep losing wickets – and soft wickets. I think that’s what we have been trying to remediate for the last couple of months. [It] doesn’t seem like it’s there yet.”
West Indies were well-placed at 53/2 in the sixth over of the chase. However, they ended up losing six wickets in the middle phase between the overs 7-16 and that triggered this collapse.
There was some criticism over the West Indies’ batting order with the likes of Jason Holder and Odean Smith batting as low as at number seven and number 10 respectively. However, Simmons warded off that as one of the reasons that caused this defeat. Instead, he mentioned that player have to make an impact if they are sent higher up the order and that it couldn’t be used as an excuse for this loss.
“Well, I don’t think so,” he said. “People need to be able to go up and make a difference. Sometimes a batsman goes up and he has to propel his side with ten balls, 15 off 10 balls and so on. Guys have to bat in different positions. Today there was no real different positions,” Simmons opened up on his thought process.
He further added, “I think guys were batting where they are strong. We talk about looking at data, looking at different things. But guys are batting where they are strong. I don’t think that can be used as an excuse.” West Indies will next face Zimbabwe at the same venue on Wednesday as they look to secure a desperate victory to sustain their prospects of qualifying for the Super 12 stage of the tournament.
