Gutted after their shock loss to Scotland, West Indies coach Phil Simmons on Monday urged his boys to wake up and pick up the pieces as they gear up for a must-win challenge against Zimbabwe in the T20 World Cup. Only four of their batters reached double digits as it was an abject batting surrender by the Nicholas Pooran-led side who folded for 118 in 18.3 overs, chasing Scotland’s 161. “Our batting definitely was a bit unprofessional. We need to wake up and start being as professional as we can be when we are batting,” Simmons said in the post-match media conference here.
“The bowlers seem to be working hard and putting us in good positions, but the batters continue to falter.” “It’s just too many soft dismissals. I think 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.” Losing wickets at regular intervals was one of the primary reason for this defeat.
“It doesn’t matter who we are playing against, but we keep losing wickets and soft wickets. So I think that I’ve been trying to remedy it for the last couple of months. Doesn’t seem like it’s there yet.
Hailing their bowlers’ performance, Simmons said: “The bowlers have been doing an excellent job. I think if we look at the stats and the data, if we know we’re 7 to 15, we’ve been doing very well for the last year.
“So for them to pull it back after that it was expected from us. So I think they did a great job,” he said.
The two-time T20 World Cup champions now face Zimbabwe in a do-or-die clash here on Wednesday.
“We need to beat Zimbabwe first. That’s the first step as we go along. When we get back here at this time on Wednesday, then we may be thinking a lot different on all those things you spoke about.” In the second Group B match on Monday, Zimbabwe outplayed Ireland by 31 runs on the back of a solid batting show.
Simmons however was confident that his team would make it to the Super 12. Two teams from the group make the cut and it’s Scotland and Zimbabwe who lead the standings with one win each.
“It was last year, Bangladesh lost the first game and they still ended up in the Super 12. So we’ve just got to think about Zimbabwe right now,” he said.
With a day off for them, Simmons said: “A day tomorrow to just rest and reflect on how things went, what we have to change and how we have to think in the next game.
“Someone said, we’ve been out there; we’ve been hitting balls. We’ve been practicing scenarios. We’ve been thinking about it. It’s now to put it into play,” he concluded. (NDTV)
