Sammy urges WI batters to point out extra ‘intent to attain’

Jun 21, 2023 at 10:05 PM
Sammy urges WI batters to point out extra ‘intent to attain’

Daren Sammy, the West Indies head coach, is cautious of the menace posed by the brand new ball within the early-morning circumstances in Zimbabwe, however has referred to as for extra intent from his batters. In West Indies’ opening recreation against USA within the World Cup Qualifiers on the Takashinga sports activities membership in Harare, they’d a sedate powerplay, managing simply 41 runs for the lack of each their openers Brandon King and Kyle Mayers.

“We don’t have say in how the toss goes, but whenever we bat, that new ball poses a challenge,” Sammy advised CWI media. “You’ve got to make sure that the opposition don’t get too much ahead when that new ball comes. I thought we could have had more intent because that’s one of the things we are talking about as a batting group – intent to score. And when I say intent to score, it’s not looking for boundaries but looking for scoring opportunities and when you do that, you could score off good balls and get rotation of strike going.

“Again, it is a work in progress and we’ve to bowl nicely and hold creating alternatives. We dropped a few catches and that might have an effect on us within the greater scheme of issues. But I’m fairly pleased with the best way we’re going; the final six video games that we’ve performed we have taken steps in making an attempt to play the model of cricket we wish to transfer ahead with it. Again, it is sticking to our weapons, sticking to the plans that we’ve, and believing and committing to the execution.”

Despite King and Mayers scoring nothing or next to nothing, and despite Shamarh Brooks unavailable because of illness, West Indies regained lost ground through their middle order. Shai Hope, who has slid down to No.4 since taking charge of the ODI side, and Johnson Charles, who had replaced Brooks, led a quartet of half-centuries as West Indies posted 297, which proved 39 too many for USA. Though none of the batters could kick on and score a century, Sammy was pleased with the progress of the line-up.

Under Sammy and Hope, West Indies are looking to adopt a more aggressive approach and on Sunday, they had batting all the way down to No.11, with allrounder Akeal Hosein slotting in there. It was this depth that perhaps prompted the likes of Hope and Nicholas Pooran to keep playing their shots.

“I listened to the captain after the post-match,” Sammy said. “He stated ideally it’s your decision considered one of them to attain an enormous hundred, however he was happier that performances got here from totally different batsmen within the group. You have a look at Brandon King, who has been enjoying nicely, did not get a rating, Kyle Mayers did not get a rating, so it is good indicators for us that although we have been underneath stress we got here again strongly and ideally you’d need a kind of to transform it into 100 and we, as a group, have fun the milestones after.

“But yeah the guys have prepared well and they are hitting lots of balls and they understand the direction the team wants to go in as a batting group. It is early doors, but the fact that mindset is getting towards what we want to do as a team I believe that you will see improvement in days to come.”

West Indies’ subsequent recreation is towards Nepal, who had strung collectively an unbelievable collection of wins to make it to the World Cup qualifier. In their first match of the match, they brushed UAE apart by six wickets. Nepal’s head coach is Monty Desai who was beforehand with West Indies as their batting coach underneath Phil Simmons. Sammy made it clear that West Indies aren’t taking any opposition calmly in a cut-throat match, which permits simply two groups to qualify for the World Cup later this 12 months in India.

“Yeah, I guess [in] the first match against the USA, we got the ‘W’ that we wanted, which was the win,” Sammy stated. “Great start to the tournament, but we have so much left in the tank. The guys came out and you could see they were not happy with the way they played, which is a good sign for us. We keep challenging ourselves and yeah in the end we have a few things we have to continue. But it’s a work in progress – trying to find the identity of our cricket moving forward.

“But, yeah, I used to be happy with the victory. You come [up] towards Nepal, a group who’s on the rise and so they’ve been enjoying some good cricket, so once more we respect all our oppositions, however we deal with the issues that we wish to do as a group and deal with the model of cricket we wish to play. And all of it boils all the way down to our preparation, which we have been doing nicely after which on recreation day the execution. I’ve full confidence and perception within the boys – or males relatively – that they are going to exit and do themselves and the area proud.”

Deivarayan Muthu is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo