Darren Sammy and Zimbabwe. (Photo Source: Twitter)
Former West Indies skipper and current head coach, Daren Sammy is extremely unhappy with his team’s performance against West Indies in the ongoing ODI World Cup Qualifiers. Notably, against Zimbabwe, the Shai Hope-led side was extremely poor on the field, which eventually cost them the match as the home team managed to win by 35 runs.
Speaking about their performance, Sammy mentioned that he is extremely disappointed and that if they keep giving chances to the opposition batters, they will dominate eventually. He added saying his boys didn’t take enough responsibility and thus, the team didn’t deserve to win.
“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.
Wouldn’t say it hampers our qualifications but it makes it more difficult: Sammy
After losing to Zimbabwe, head coach Sammy did admit that their qualification scenario got a bit complicated as the team will now have to play better cricket in the remaining games to smooth things up. He also mentioned that the defeat against the hosts isn’t the end of the world as he expects the players to bounce back.
“I wouldn’t say it hampers (our qualification) but it makes it more difficult. 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. 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,” Sammy added.