Last Updated on 9 months ago by Charbel Coorey

Cricket News: Why did West Indies disappoint so much in the T20 World Cup? | Why the West Indies had a bad campaign in the 2021 World Cup

West Indies has won the ICC T20 World Cup title twice, first in 2012 and then again in 2016. Any T20 league is incomplete without the Windies players. You can say that they’ve ruled the shortest format for all these years. Players like Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo have been legends of 20-over cricket.

Before the start of the 2021 T20 World Cup, Windies were the top title contenders. However, their on-field performance was totally opposite from what was expected from them and they failed to reach the Semi Finals. Not only this, Windies have lost their spot in the Super 12 round for the next World T20 and will have to play the first round to earn a place.

Incredible.

So, what exactly happened to the West Indies that the two-time champions were so poor in this T20 World Cup? Let’s try to find the answer to this.

Poor Squad Selection

West Indies, despite possessing the very biggest names in T20 cricket, picked a poor squad. They had someone like Jason Holder as an injury replacement and out of nowhere picked 37-year-old Ravi Rampaul on the back of one good CPL season where he picked 19 wickets in 10 games. I’m not saying his selection was totally baseless, but instead of Rampaul, West Indies could’ve picked Romario Shepherd or Odean Smith, who both had excellent CPL 2021 campaigns.

Shepherd picked 18 wickets in nine games at an economy of 7.69. Plus, he scored 109 runs in eight innings averaging 21.80 with a strike-rate of 165.15 and 72* being his best score. Smith on other hand picked 18 wickets as well in 11 games at an economy of 7.54. He scored 126 runs in nine innings averaging 18 with a strike-rate of 132.63.

As the numbers suggest, both these players had a phenomenal outing in CPL 2021 and Windies could have picked both in their 15-man squad. Shepherd and Smith both bowl a heavy ball or the hard-length ball at very good pace and are very hard hitters of the ball.

Moreover, the tracks at Abu Dhabi and Dubai had good bounce for the pacers and Shepherd or Smith would have exploited the conditions nicely.

Chris Gayle at 3

Despite Chris Gayle performing throughout his career opening the innings, West Indies persisted with him at number 3. We all know that Chris Gayle wasn’t the same as he was a few years ago. But, it would’ve been a good choice to send him up the order where he can exploit the field restrictions and get himself going to play big knocks like he’s known for.

Here are Chris Gayle’s numbers while opening and at number 3:

Although his numbers are somewhat similar in both the positions, he has a better strike-rate and balls-per-boundary while opening. In addition, as mentioned above, the field restrictions could have helped him get going.

Sure, it would have resulted in West Indies opening with two left-handers – something that teams tend to avoid in this era of match-ups – but it was worth the gamble.

One thing was clear that they were not going to drop the “Universe Boss” so it would have been more sensible to drop Lendl Simmons and play Roston Chase at three from the beginning with Gayle opening the innings.

Failure of the batting unit

The Windies middle order failed miserably in all games of their wretched tournament. They survived on individual performances when one of their batters had a good day but if this wasn’t the case then they were well below par.

The chart below will help you understand this better:

Windies’ powerplay strike rate was the third-worst amongst top teams as they were only ahead of Pakistan and South Africa. However, Pakistan was brilliant in the middle order and the Proteas were terrific with the ball, while West Indies were the worst batting unit during the middle-overs in the Super 12 round as shown in the chart below:

Among teams in the Super 12s, West Indies were the worst performing team against spin. The numbers are quite damning.

They were good in the death overs, but it was too late for them to recover after a slow powerplay and an even slower middle phase.

Their no show in the powerplay and middle overs meant that their finishers were left with too much to do. Another big concern for them was the underutilization of Andre Russell who faced only 17 deliveries in the five games he played. We all know how destructive Andre Russell can be with the bat and facing less than three overs in the entire tournament is truly a big miss for the West Indies team.

Also, Kieron Pollard had a strike-rate of only 107.14 in five matches. He scored only 90 runs in 84 deliveries. Therefore, the underutilization of Andre Russell and poor form of Kieron Pollard was a major concern for West Indies, which led to their failure as a batting unit.

Ineffective Bowling

It wasn’t only their batting unit that failed. West Indies bowlers were ineffective as well. Windies bowlers picked only 16 wickets in five games including two run-outs. So, if you exclude the run-outs it’s less than three wickets per game which is pretty poor performance by the bowlers and it reflects in their standings as well.

And if you further break down their bowling phase-wise (shown in the charts below), it shows the reason for their poor performance with the ball.

So as you can see that the West Indies bowlers were decent in the powerplay picking up eight wickets and conceding runs at 7.03 runs per over. The Windies can thank Akeal Hosein for this. The left-arm spinner is a genuine wicket taker with the new ball and causes trouble for the batters with his tight bowling early on.

Windies were the worst side with the ball in the middle phase picking up only four wickets and their economy rate of 8.79 during this period was the highest amongst the Super 12 teams.

West Indies really missed a good spinner in the middle overs or even a good pacer (middle-order enforcer) who could bowl hard lengths at high pace. Hayden Walsh Jr. struggled with the ball in the opportunities he got, giving away 44 runs in the five overs he bowled in the whole tournament. The injury to Fabian Allen didn’t help the cause either, as did West Indies’ decision to exclude Sunil Narine from their squad.

The Windies bowlers weren’t that bad in the death overs giving away 9.61 runs per over which is good when compared with the other teams. However, they picked only four wickets in that phase which is the joint lowest with Bangladesh. Veteran DJ Bravo, who was their best death bowler, picked only two wickets in four games.

So, overall they didn’t concede too many runs but didn’t pick wickets either which didn’t put the batting side under pressure in the death overs.

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It was the end of an era for a champion side. They have a good core of young players and hopefully they’ll come back stronger next time.Thanks for Reading.

Written by Robin Rounder. Follow Robin on Twitter today.

All the stats in the article were provided by Darpan Jain. Follow Darpan on Twitter.