President of Cricket West Indies Ricky Skerrit has issued a statement citing deep disappointment at the poor results of the West Indies team at the 2022 Men’s T20 World Cup
His comment comes after the West Indies were soundly beaten by Ireland today which meant for the first time in their history they would not be competing in the Super 12s of a T20 World Cup. Skerrit’s statement in full is as follows:
“I am deeply disappointed with the performance results of our team in Australia and I appreciate the sense of utter frustration that is being experienced by many. The ongoing inability of our batsmen to prevail over opposing slow bowling continued to be an obvious weakness in Australia and untimely shot selections seem to be deeply embedded in the T20 batting culture of our senior team. However, I want to assure stakeholders that a thorough postmortem will be carried out on all aspects of our World Cup preparation and performance, and that solutions will be found in keeping with CWI’s strategy to improve the quality and sustainability of cricket on all fronts, and in all formats. West Indies cricket is bigger than any one individual or event and continues to need the input and support of all stakeholders.”
West Indies lost against Scotland by 42 runs on Monday October 17th and in today’s decider versus Ireland by nine wickets. The batting department failed to score 160 runs in any of the three matches, with only Johnson Charles and Brandon King coming out of this tournament with any real credit with the bat. Captain Nicholas Pooran scored an aggregate of 25 runs this tournament.
Alzarri Joseph and Jason Holder were West Indies’ best performers, with the ball taking six and five wickets respectively.
There were question marks over several tactical decisions made by Pooran particularly his decision to not use either Joseph or Holder in the powerplay in any of the three games. Holder especially boasts a T20I powerplay record of an economy rate of 7.92 per over. Instead Smith was chosen to bowl in that phase against Ireland despite his record of three wickets for an economy rate of 11.18 in 11 overs and his first three balls went for 4,6,4.
Under-fire coach Phil Simmons said after the game “We haven’t produced good enough cricket to be there (Super 12s round) or else we would be there. We have the batsmen and the capabilities but we just haven’t been putting it together. Our bowlers have shown up nine out of ten times but our batsmen haven’t really shown up. I think all of them would be disappointed in what they produced, not just in the World Cup but just before that. The batsmen need to take a long at themselves and figure out how we score 170-180 runs to win a game.”
West Indies’ next match is against Australia in the test series later this year which begins on November 29th at the Perth Stadium.
