With the West Indies team still searching for its second win at the 2019 International Cricket World Cup since their opening match success for national cricket Mark Harper feels that poor batting and poor tactics have been responsible for defeats.
Since that defeat of Pakistan, the West Indies have struggled to ‘put the final nail in the coffin’ in the other matches and have failed to appease the hearts of their devoted fans.
Harper, a former cricket coach says he feels the Caribbean side’s poor tactical approach to opposing teams, coupled with dismal batting, were the main defects of their sorry campaign.
Harper expressed disappointment with the campaign which ends tomorrow against winless Afghanistan.
“Like all West Indians we are disappointed with their showing. I think even if we didn’t win the competition at least we would have put up a better showing.”
The former West Indies `B’ batsman said that the batting in particular has failed the two-time champions.
“I think it is disappointing with the bat, batting in particular has been very disappointing,” he stated.
“Chris Gayle would like to continue and that is up to the selectors but he has been a tremendous servant to West Indies cricket. He has been one of our greatest players but I am a bit disappointed in his application in this tournament.
“I think if he had applied himself a bit better and cut out some of the high risk shots he could have played some match winning innings… [Darren] Bravo is a different type of player compared to [Nicholas] Pooran and [Shimron] Hetymer who are more adventurous players and stroke makers.
“Bravo is a very solid player who is going to stay there and accumulate his runs like [Shai] Hope, you know, keep one end going and because he has been out of touch and Hope hasn’t been in the best of form, it exposed a lot of our free scoring players early and they have not been able to cope,” he reasoned.
Pooran, who averages 51 so far, along with Carlos Brathwaite, are the only two batsmen to score a century in the tournament. Hetmyer and Gayle are averaging 36 and 33 respectively with Hope and Brathwaite averaging 28.
Along with this group, only Jason Holder has managed over 100 runs collectively.
Harper posited that the batsmen lacked the temperament to steer the game through the different phases in comparison to the other teams who managed to get the upper hand after being in a difficult spot.
“I think what is really showing up is that we are not really understanding how to play in various patches of the game, you know the game goes through various phases and you find that some of the top teams, the Indians and Australians and so when they get into a rough patch and lose a couple of quick wickets someone digs in, puts their heads down, makes sure they get a partnership and they could be attacking in the end, we seem to play one dimensional cricket and keep scoring at a fast rate and it is a high risk cricket and we have paid the price for that,” Harper noted.
West Indies allowed Australia to come back from 79-5 to pile on 288 with number eight batsman, Nathan Counter-Nile scoring 92 in a game where they lost by 15 runs after being 216-6. Against England the batting collapsed from 155-5 to 212 all out while against India their batting crumbled for 143 in a chase of 269.
Facing New Zealand they fell six runs short despite the fact that Brathwaite’s century gave them a chance of winning.
In the match against Bangladesh, they failed to defend 321 as the Asian side comfortably chased down the target with nine overs to spare. In their match versus Sri Lanka, three crucial run outs saw them 23 runs short of their 339-run target.
“I think we have to learn from these instances, we keep doing the same thing over and over we need to learn and assess a lot more concentration and tactical awareness when we bat and I think if we do that we will get much better results,” Harper suggested of those close encounters.
“First of all you can’t have one plan going into a tournament because you are playing against different teams, Sri Lanka for instance were preparing for West Indies with a slab of granite and were pinging it off, getting accustomed to the short ball and they played our fast bowlers well. In England you will get a bit of movement and you need to exploit that a bit, get the ball in a good length and then use the short ball tactically which the other teams have done, they used the bumper into the chest, the slower bumper, higher bumper and so to pick up wickets but I think we just figured we could have blast people out when we had Pakistan in the first game.”
Despite the vast pool of talent in the region, Harper maintained that talent isn’t everything.
“We have a lot of talent but other teams have a lot of talent too, the game is not about talent, the game is about being able to execute and perform at different stages and that is it, you got to bring your talent but also be tactically aware and bring your temperament, you got to know in situations what is your best chance of succeeding and I don’t think we are doing that very often.”
Harper, a former Bermuda coach said Captain Jason Holder had not produced as expected.
“I think holder has not produced the figures we were hoping for. I think West Indies has to rethink that [his captaincy]. He is a very good player but I think in One Day cricket he struggles with his captaincy and definitely we don’t get the returns from him as captain,” he stated.
Going forward, the 61-year-old advised that it is time for the best minds around to come together and help support the game from the grassroots level in an effort to fix their issues early while implementing a mental training programme for the youths.
“I think from the West Indies point of view we need to have a very good cricket committee, guys who understand the game, 100 percent committed to developing the game, who would come out with programmes and formats of the tournaments that will give us a good chance of developing champions. We’ve got to go back into the territories and develop academies and have people like Reon King, Clyde Butts, and Roger Harper working with the kids. Griffith and Crandon have done a good job but I think they need some help to start from young working with the talents, training them properly, but also working on them mentally,” he suggested.
