Simmons: Batsmen must do their job

THE batsmen have to do their job as the bowling and fielding unit have been good thus far.

That was the assessment of West Indies coach, Phil Simmons, ahead of the third and final CG Insurance T20 International Match against Sri Lanka today.

Simmons was speaking at a virtual press conference where he said that “in both games, the bowlers have been excellent”.

Simmons highlighted how the bowlers managed to pull back Sri Lanka who had a good start in the second match, and after the visitors were 94 runs after 10 overs, the West Indies were able to hold them to 160 runs.

However, in both games, the batting wobbled and the Sri Lanka spinners were on top of the West Indies batsmen.

Simmons said that not much thought has gone into playing an extra spinner for the West Indies as the bowling unit has been doing well, but “I think there is more thought about how we negotiate, how we play, how we score runs against their spinners”.

The coach pointed out, “The key is making sure that we are looking to play them in the right way. You can’t be too tentative when you are playing against good spinners, so you have to still go out there and look to score against them and playing cricket how we know to play cricket.”

With West Indies players having played all over the world, Simmons noted: “All the guys who played IPL would have played against these spinners and even better spinners and done well, so that’s what we have to make sure we do tomorrow (today).”

Simmons also pointed out that the dot ball percentage in the T20, as well as the 50-over version, needs to be reduced. He believes that if they continue to hit the boundaries and reduce the dot balls, then they will have some high scores.

As for looking at a player to anchor the innings and for others to bat around, the coach said that it was more about batsmen taking the responsibility of the situation that they are placed in during the game when they go to the middle.

“In this format, we are not looking at specific player to bat around because today Evin (Lewis) and Simo (Lendl Simmons) can go out and Evin starts and Simmons has to buckle down and bat through or visa versa on another day. Even if you go down the order, Chris (Gayle) has played a few innings in the IPL where he has batted through the innings and (Nicholas) Pooran has done it, so everyone has the ability to do it.”

Will the West Indies clinch the series and the batsmen finally put up a good showing without the major wobbles?

The answer to that question will be tonight. (CG)