As a team we were quite poor tactically: Daren Sammy on West Indies' World Cup exit
Oct 28, 2022
St John's [Antigua], October 28 : Two-time ICC Men's T20 World Cup winning captain Daren Sammy believes the West Indies got much wrong during their time in Australia and they were tactically botched during much of their three First Round games.
And just like many other former greats, Sammy was shocked to see two-time World Cup champions West Indies crash out of the tournament during the First Round in Australia. West Indies the two times T20 World Cup champion generally known as a T20 powerhouse, were knocked out from the qualifying stages of the event after defeats against Ireland and Scotland.
"I thought as a team we were quite poor tactically and the problem wasn't the caliber of players as we had enough talent to play much better. The cricket we play now doesn't match the talent we have in the team. The team lacked inspiration, they lacked motivation and tactically we were not on song. When you look at a wicket and you have Jason Holder who is six-foot-eight (inches) and you have Alzarri Joseph who is bowling well and you keep opening the bowling with Kyle Mayers," ICC.com quoted Sammy as saying.
"No disrespect to him (Mayers) as conditions in St Lucia in the Caribbean are quite different to Australia where the ball bounces. You have got to win the Powerplays both with the bat and the ball, and we found ourselves losing the Powerplays and having to bring the bowlers back on to try and bring us back into the game, and it was the same with the bat," he added.
Australia great Ricky Ponting labeled the efforts by the Caribbean side a disgrace while the Cricket West Indies President Ricky Skerritt promised a full review of what went wrong down under in the tournament.
"The sad thing is that not many people are putting their hands up to come and coach the West Indies. Even though we were not performing at Tests and ODI, we dominated T20I cricket (during his playing career) and that was something that would bring smiles to the fans and now we have lost it. Whoever comes in (as coach) needs to be tactically sound, have good man management skills and the people around him need to be technically correct," Sammy said.
