It was painfully obvious that the West Indies failed to do the necessary evaluation from their first three matches, that would have allowed them to be competitive against South Africa yesterday.
If this team wanted to beat South Africa, the players and management would have had to do an assessment of their three performances, and see what improvements could be made. Nothing I saw yesterday suggested that this happened.
It was almost like the victories against Pakistan and Zimbabwe made the West Indies believe they were invincible, and that there were no areas upon which to improve. What a shame!
AB de Villiers was awesome, out of this world–make no bones about that, and it is probably the finest innings in this form of the game I have seen. His shot making was unbelievable. But connoisseurs of the game would agree that his eventual score was aided by some of the poorest cricket, tactically and otherwise, played by a West Indian team.
It is crystal clear that South Africa had a plan. West Indies had none.
You looked at Hashim Amla, Faf du Plessis and the other top order batsmen, and at 87 for 2, with the bowlers getting assistance from the pitch, you could sense they understood their roles. Slowly and surely, they constructed the platform, making the rest easy for de Villiers and Riley Rossouw to go berserk.
Despite help from the wicket, the West Indies bowlers never focused on dismissing the batsmen. Their mindset was to be as defensive as possible. Even at 146 for three when we needed to get wickets, we were unimaginative, looking to contain, with our attacking bowlers kept back for God knows what. In case nobody told the West Indies, once a team gets a good start and has wickets in hand, it is inevitable that runs will flow, as we saw. Risking a few runs for a top order wicket or two, won't hurt.
If the bowling lacked creativity, our batsmen were brought back down to earth by quality bowling. We scored over 300 runs in three previous innings against the chalk. However, against the cheese, we could barely pass 150 in less than 34 overs. What a difference two days make!
Despite his record breaking performance, Chris Gayle must understand his role as the key batsman and must perform as such. He is vulnerable early in his innings, and should allow Dwayne Smith to play the big shots, and stay at the non striker's end for as long as possible. Chris is much more capable than de Villiers in this form of the game, but he has to give himself a chance.
Now that Darren Bravo is no longer around, I believe that the number three position should be given to Lendl Simmons, and not Marlon Samuels. We need an assured player at three. I don't believe Samuels understands the role of a number three. I think Simmons has the form, the understanding and intelligence to bat there.
An organised top four with players who understand their roles will help to settle the rest of the batsmen. I don't know how much we have learnt from this match, but sometimes a result like this one is exactly what is needed to jolt us into understanding just where we are.
Are we going to capitalise and learn from the South Africa bashing, or from any of the matches we have played so far? I hope we do–it may well be the difference between leaving after the first phase, or moving on to the quarterfinals.