The West In­dies did as was ex­pect­ed against the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates. Hav­ing worked out the per­mu­ta­tions that were nec­es­sary to earn a place in the quar­ter­fi­nals, they achieved a con­vinc­ing re­sult.

I am not go­ing to dwell too much on the match, since that might be seen as giv­en cred­i­bil­i­ty to a coun­try that, crick­et wise, should not even be on the same field with the West In­dies. The UAE were at the World Cup, and I am sure they have ben­e­fit­ted. Good luck to them and all the oth­er min­nows who as­pire to as­so­ciate with the elite of the game.

Chris Gayle's ab­sence yes­ter­day may have been a bless­ing in dis­guise, as it pro­vid­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for John­son Charles to play. More im­por­tant­ly, Charles would have got­ten a feel of the con­di­tions be­fore go­ing in­to bat­tle against New Zealand.

Hope­ful­ly, he will part­ner Gayle, as we have all seen that Dwayne Smith sim­ply can­not do what is nec­es­sary with bat or ball, to make the con­ver­sion from a T20 crick­eter to this longer ver­sion.

Charles' pres­ence will be a ma­jor boost to Gayle, and pro­vides a glim­mer of hope against New Zealand. He must soak up as many of the ear­ly bowl­ing as pos­si­ble and al­low Gayle to work things out from the non strik­er's end. The longer Gayle stays at the crease, whether strik­ing or not, the bet­ter the team will be served.

I re­main con­vinced that we are do­ing the same things over and over and ex­pect­ing dif­fer­ent re­sults. That may work against the weak­er teams but we are at a point where luck will def­i­nite­ly run out against the likes of New Zealand, Aus­tralia and Sri Lan­ka.

I have to won­der if the team's man­age­ment is analysing our per­for­mances. If they are, there is no ev­i­dence to sup­port it.

I have said of­ten enough that the in­ter­est of the team must trump in­di­vid­ual agen­das. Some­how, I sense this is not the case.

Why is Mar­lon Samuels still bat­ting at three, and strug­gling at that, while Lendl Sim­mons, a nat­ur­al open­ing bats­man, who is tech­ni­cal­ly bet­ter equipped to han­dle the swing­ing, bounc­ing ball, is com­ing in at six?

Is it be­cause Sim­mons scored a cen­tu­ry at that po­si­tion so he will re­main there for­ev­er? And who made that de­ci­sion?

As it stands, yes­ter­day's match against the UAE was an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make the ad­just­ment but since it did not hap­pen, it sug­gests that Samuels will stay at three no mat­ter what. How un­for­tu­nate! I am on record as say­ing that I pre­fer to meet New Zealand in the quar­ter fi­nal, ahead of Aus­tralia or Sri Lan­ka. We got what I think was the best op­po­si­tion of the top three from Group A for the West In­dies. I main­tain that the Ki­wis, while they have done well in all their match­es so far, are the most vul­ner­a­ble of the top three. While we go in­to that match as un­der­dogs, our best per­for­mance will get us past the Ki­wis.

But it will NOT hap­pen un­less we have a plan, which must be high­ly thought out, and ex­e­cut­ed by a team ef­fort and com­mon un­der­stand­ing among each play­er.

As it stands, we have beat­en The UAE, Zim­bab­we and Pak­istan, and lost to South Africa, Ire­land and In­dia - three wins, and three loss­es. Still, our jour­ney con­tin­ues. We have three more match­es to win if we are to be­come World Cup cham­pi­ons 2015. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we do not have the lux­u­ry of los­ing an­oth­er match.

Un­less we un­der­stand the need for metic­u­lous plan­ning, to­tal com­mit­ment and an all out team ef­fort, mi­nus in­di­vid­ual agen­das and egos, things could come to a screech­ing stop next Sun­day in Welling­ton.