Unfortunately for West Indies fans, the guys in maroon are out of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.
It is difficult to make a case for them and say they deserved to be there because they did not play smart cricket and were not consistent enough to compete. Forget the excuse about the difficult pitches.
On reflection, their best all-round performances in the group stages were against Uganda and Afghanistan. While in the Super 8, they hammered a very ordinary USA team. The opening encounter against Papua New Guinea saw the West Indies at one stage at 97 for 5 after 16 overs, with Roston Chase and Andre Russell coming to their team’s rescue by scoring 40 in 18 balls to seal victory. Being the first game, one could have excused the performance, as getting that first game out of the way is always good for all the teams.
How they overcame Uganda was encouraging. I felt they should have scored another 27 to get the score up to 200 runs, but the Providence pitch in Guyana spun, and the ball did not come onto the bat as it should have. However, they turned it on with the ball, and all the bowlers bowled exceedingly well. It was the perfect warm-up going into the encounter with New Zealand, but the Kiwis, having succumbed to Afghanistan, were looking to bounce back, and their bowling attack was varied, so the batsmen had to come good. At 31 for 5 and 58 for 6, the packed Brian Lara Cricket Academy feared the worst, and had it not been for a mixture of bad cricket by the Kiwis and good shot selection by Sherfane Rutherford, the West Indies would have been in serious trouble.
The dismissal of the top five batsmen was poor, and had the New Zealand team not gambled by bowling out their top four bowlers by over number 18 and left the last two overs to be bowled by Daryl Mitchell and Mitchell Santner; the total may well have been 125 rather than the difficult target of 149. Confidence was now high after the victory, and when they played on the best pitch in the tournament in St Lucia, the batsmen shone as 218 was never going to be within reach of the Afghans. West Indies marched into the Super 8 with high expectations. They were grouped with England, surprisingly the USA, and a South African team that was unbeaten, not playing their best cricket, but somehow was getting over the line.
In the first game of the Super 8 phase against England in St Lucia, where they experienced a good pitch, they would have known that 200 was the par score. Still, no batsman could carry their bat beyond the thirties, and after falling 20 runs short of the target, it was left to the bowlers to pull them out. But Phil Salt, who seems to like West Indies bowling, tore the attack to shreds, and losing with 15 balls to spare was not written into the script. The selection of the final eleven against the English must be questioned based on the performance in the previous game against Afghanistan.
After thumping the USA, it was a must-win situation against South Africa. Even though it was a disappointing pitch in Antigua, the batting again failed, and the bowlers couldn’t pull it off. Although they took the game into the last over, some of the tactics were quite baffling as the South African batting is not as strong as a few years ago.
Yes, I know it is easy in hindsight to say this, or that should have been done, but the West Indies seems to have a game plan and never changed it to suit the conditions of the game. Was it a good idea to have both Nicholas Pooran and Kyle Mayers together from the first over? It paved the way for Aiden Markram to bowl his off-spin and leave their best bowler—Kagiso Rabada—until over number 18. Why would Russell take a single off the last ball of over number 17 to give Akeal Hosein the strike at the start of over number 18 and then proceed to try and get a single off the first ball of the over? Why would Hosein bowl the first over to Quinton de Kock and not the off-spin of Chase?
Enough about the West Indies. My final question is to the ICC: Why aren’t the final group games or Super 8 games played simultaneously, like in football tournaments worldwide, so the team playing the final game would not know exactly what they have to do before the game to advance to the next round? More on that and my preview of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup final in this Saturday’s Guardian.
Editor’s note: The views expressed in the preceding article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of any organisation in which he is a stakeholder.
