Head Coach, Phil Simmons is pushing the T20 players harder than normal as they prepare to kick start the new era of consistency with a series win against New Zealand.
West Indies are set to play the first T20I of the three-match series tomorrow but the Indian Premier League (IPL) faction of West Indians only joined the rest of the squad on the eve of the series opener.
According to Simmons in a recent press conference, it has been tricky to manage two bubbles but with coach Trevor Penny working with the IPL unit, he can rest easier.
“We are not in ideal times and the preparation hasn’t been ideal,” he said.
“The group in Christchurch right now have been doing a lot of hard work with Trevor Penny who is there with them… It’s a group of IPL players who know what it is like to be prepared for a tournament or series so I think that has made that side a bit more comfortable and rest a little bit easier that everything is being done over there,” he added.
Simmons noted that the other players who came from the Caribbean to New Zealand have also been churning out the hard work in their preparation with the management pushing them harder to be ready for tomorrow’s encounter.
“On this side we just tried to make sure that when the IPL group comes in, this group is as sharp as they could be coming from a tournament and then training so we have just been pushing these a bit harder than we would normally do leading up to a series to make sure each one here is as sharp as he can be for Friday night,” he explained.
With two T20 World Cup titles, West Indies are languishing at ninth on the ICC rankings. To Simmons, this can only be described as an “imbalance,” since the team is a better team on paper.
“It’s disappointing to look at the chart and see us where we are because we know if you put us on paper we are better than that but the game is not played on paper, we have to make sure we are starting to win series after series in order to get up the table and be ranked number one where we were a number of years ago,” he reasoned.
“It’s not only about winning the trophies but being consistent throughout the year or two years between tournaments,” he added.
Nevertheless he assured that the team was working to correct its mistakes.
“It’s something I know we are trying to correct, it’s about playing your best team as much as possible and playing your best cricketers as often as possible,” he said.
Simmons pointed out that the new era of consistent performances can begin with a series win over New Zealand in their own back yard. In his view, this would be the perfect start to their road to the World Cup and a big boost to the rankings.
“You have to continue winning and winning breeds winning…we need to start winning from here and to win against the Black Caps in New Zealand is going to be a big boost for us moving forward because the plans for October-November or whenever the T20 World Cup is afoot because we need to start playing the kind of cricket we want to play and that means winning a series against the Black Caps in New Zealand, that would be huge,” Simmons said.
