Harare [Zimbabwe], June 25 : West Indies head coach Daren Sammy chastised his fielders for their shoddy performance, which let Zimbabwe off the hook and admitted to being "extremely disappointed" by his team's effort.
West Indies dropped Sikandar Raza twice, first on 1 and again on 7, and the hitter took advantage of those reprieves to score 68 runs off 58 balls. West Indies made four catches in all, with Alzarri Joseph responsible for three of them.
"Extremely disappointed. At the toss, we got to do what we wanted to do, which is to bowl first. Look, if we continue to display this type of fielding - we've spoken about it for the last few games - and if you keep giving the opposition's best batters chances, eventually the cricket gods will catch up with you," Sammy said at his post-match press conference.
"And it did with us today, but [a target of] 269 on that surface... Again, these are the things we're trying to change. We've seen it happen in the past before and the direction that I want this team to move forward...Today was really poor and it's about taking responsibility and we didn't do that today. And hence we didn't deserve to win at all today," he added.
The West Indies, along with Sri Lanka, were pre-tournament favourites to qualify for the World Cup in India, but their defeat to Zimbabwe has now jeopardised their prospects of competing in the main event later this year. West Indies missed two points that they might have taken on to the Super Sixes (two points are carried over for each win against other teams that qualify from your group - in West Indies' instance, Zimbabwe and Netherlands), but Sammy claimed that it wasn't the end of the road yet.
"I wouldn't say it hampers [our qualification] but it makes it more difficult," Sammy said.
"You'd love to go into the Super Six with four points. We knew from the time we left home that this game would've been very important to us. And again, like I said, the way we've played... I kept telling the guys that we kept on winning games [by] not playing our best cricket. Today again, we asked so much of ourselves. When you put on a display of fielding like this and then you get yourself in a good position and take the game for granted, the cricket gods will make you pay and that's exactly what I'm going to tell them in the dressing room. We did not deserve to win, and we did not play to win today and now we have a lot of work to do - firstly to get to the Super Six and take on the other teams that we face," the West Indies coach said.
Sammy also encouraged West Indies to get back on track against the Netherlands.
"We have to be in that game as quickly as possible. I'm thinking about how I'm going to approach the guys in the dressing room. But look, there's no time to cry and think about it too much. We got to get our positive mindset and game face on and do it again on Monday," he said.
"Monday becomes very important for us and we will look at the squad and combination and we will come up with the best one to go out and win the game. We will not take this [Zimbabwe] victory as the end of the road. I have a strong feeling that this West Indies team will bounce back. Sometimes, you just need a good wake-up call to make you understand and appreciate the opportunity we have here," Sammy said.
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