BIRM­ING­HAM– Fol­low­ing Thurs­day’s 238-run thrash­ing at the hands of Eng­land in the open­ing One Day In­ter­na­tion­al in Eng­land, West In­dies head coach Daren Sam­my says the team’s lethar­gic start while on tour is a cause for con­cern.

The de­feat, the West In­dies’ sec­ond largest in ODIs while bat­ting sec­ond, came on the heels of the re­gion­al team’s 124-run loss to Ire­land in their ODI se­ries open­er just over a week ago.

Speak­ing in a post-match press con­fer­ence, Sam­my said it was an is­sue that need­ed to be ad­dressed ur­gent­ly.

“We were re­al­ly out­played to­day by a team that is al­so search­ing for a new iden­ti­ty, but that dis­play was just not good enough.

“We’ve played a bet­ter brand of crick­et over the last 15 to 18 months and here we just find our­selves find­ing it hard to start away from home, which is some­thing we have to rec­ti­fy,” Sam­my said.

Sam­my said while the West In­dies’ per­for­mance was for­get­table, it was es­pe­cial­ly dis­heart­en­ing to see that his troops did not fol­low the game plan.

Fur­ther­more, he said the team looked out of sorts in all de­part­ments.

“It’s good when bats­men play out of their skin, but when you know you have a plan and you haven’t re­al­ly giv­en it a chance to work, that’s the most an­noy­ing thing.

“To­day our bowlers weren’t dis­ci­plined enough. We saw how Eng­land came out and stuck to a sim­ple plan. It’s a wick­et that re­quires you to be straight and use the square bound­aries from a straight line, they showed us how it’s done,” Sam­my said.

“Our skills were not on par in any of the pow­er plays and we were chas­ing the game from ear­ly. I mean, 90 runs from the first 10 [overs], you will al­ways find your­self on the de­fen­sive and we were play­ing catchup from then.

“And when you have set bat­ters on a re­al­ly good track it’s al­ways hard to con­tain them, but again, ex­e­cu­tion, field place­ment, just know­ing what skill is re­quired and be­liev­ing in your ex­e­cu­tion, we were all over the place to­day,” he added.

De­spite the heavy loss, Sam­my said he still be­lieved the West In­dies had the abil­i­ty to bounce back in Sun­day’s sec­ond ODI in Cardiff and lev­el the three-match se­ries.

How­ev­er, he said they would have to be at their best against an Eng­land side they de­feat­ed in their last ODI se­ries in 2024.

“We know we are a team that has been im­prov­ing, and we nev­er let one per­for­mance de­ter us from the things we want to do.

“Be­fore the game start­ed, we were on­ly three points be­hind Eng­land, but to­day they played a bril­liant game and we still have the cal­i­bre of play­ers that can come out and win, but it takes a process which is ac­cess­ing what the con­di­tions bring, de­cid­ing what is re­quired and then you back your­self in the de­liv­ery,” Sam­my said.

“We’ve not ticked those box­es and un­til we do, we will find our­selves chas­ing the eight ball.”

CMC