For­mer Bar­ba­dos-born Eng­land bats­man Roland Butch­er says that the West In­dies’ bowl­ing plan is flawed in many as­pects and must be done away with im­me­di­ate­ly if they are to re­vive their 2019 ICC World Cup hopes.

Af­ter two good per­for­mances in their open­ing match­es against Pak­istan and Aus­tralia at Not­ting­ham, the West In­dies bowlers have been roughed up in their most re­cent ex­ploits against Eng­land and Bangladesh.

In the first game against Pak­istan, they bumped them out for 105 and in the sec­ond match they had Aus­tralia reel­ing on 79 for five be­fore the Aussies re­cov­ered to get 282. The West In­dies de­feat­ed Pak­istan but lost to Aus­tralia by 15 runs. How­ev­er, against Eng­land and Bangladesh they were bat­tered to all parts of the ground by the op­pos­ing bats­men and lost by eight and sev­en wick­ets re­spec­tive­ly.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Butch­er, the first West In­di­an to play for Eng­land, said: "The bowl­ing is very poor at the mo­ment and it is not as if these guys are not tal­ent­ed. They are go­ing out there with the wrong mes­sage and are try­ing to ex­e­cute a plan that is flawed in these con­di­tions.

"The first game at Not­ting­ham and even the sec­ond would have hand­ed them a fast pitch. How­ev­er, as the tour­na­ment pro­gress­es a lot of crick­et is be­ing played on these pitch­es and it will not get any faster. The pitch­es will play low­er and low­er as the tour­na­ment goes on and these guys are bowl­ing short."

Butch­er, who played a lot of crick­et in Eng­land for Mid­dle­sex and Eng­land dur­ing his ca­reer in the 1980s, said the bowlers are now not bowl­ing to suit the Eng­lish con­di­tions and will pay the price for it if they do not ad­just their game­plan.

"They need to un­der­stand that there are times when you have to pitch up the ball up and al­low for move­ment. The con­di­tions here will pro­vide you with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to get a snick here or there. All the bowlers are con­cerned with (now) is dig­ging it in short and hop­ing to get these guys out,” he said.

How­ev­er, with the next game up on Sat­ur­day against cur­rent ta­ble top­pers New Zealand, Butch­er said the bowlers may not be able to ad­just in time.

"I can't see West In­dies chang­ing this at short no­tice and I am not con­fi­dent of their chances of get­ting in­to the semis. We are look­ing here at a sit­u­a­tion where they need to win all their re­main­ing four match­es in or­der to have an out­side chance. The way they are bowl­ing, In­dia will def­i­nite­ly be a re­al­ly tough propo­si­tion," Butch­er said.

How­ev­er, Butch­er, who is do­ing com­men­tary for Cricekt360 dur­ing the cur­rent tour­na­ment, added that one of the rea­sons be­hind the team's poor per­for­mance was its make­up, which he chalked up to the se­lec­tion process.

“We have play­ers there who need to take a rest. For ex­am­ple, we in­sist on play­ing a half-fit An­dre Rus­sell. This is do­ing noth­ing for the team at the mo­ment. They should try and get some­one else in there be­cause his in­jury is hurt­ing his per­for­mances and that of his team,” he said.

“Al­so, I think that they should give Os­hane Thomas a rest and don't dam­age him with this crick­et. Leave him for the Test match­es and see where he goes from there. He needs some work on his bowl­ing and you can't do that dur­ing a tour­na­ment. I would ask the more ex­pe­ri­enced Shan­non Gabriel to take up the man­tle and leave Thomas on the side­lines.”

But Butch­er is not the on­ly per­son who has ad­dressed this is­sue. For­mer West In­dies bowl­ing greats Joel Gar­ner and Andy Roberts al­so crit­i­cised the bowl­ing tac­tics fol­low­ing the Bangladesh match.