It's a disgrace, so bad for their cricket: Ponting on West Indies' early exit from T20 WC

Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting said it’s a “disgrace” that West Indies failed to make it through to the main stage of the 2022 T20 World Cup and feels some of their players don’t really care about these ICC events. The Men in Maroon were humbled by Scotland in their first encounter before they got the better of Zimbabwe to keep themselves alive in the tournament. 

However, Ireland thrashed Nicholas Pooran and Co. on Friday by nine wickets and ended their campaign. West Indies could only manage 146/5 in 20 overs and Ireland hunted it down with 15 deliveries to spare. CWI president Ricky Skerritt has blamed the batters' shot selection and failure to play spin playing a huge role in West Indies’ early exit and said there will be a "thorough post mortem".

"It's a disgrace. It's so bad for their cricket. They've got too much talent in that team and in West Indies cricket not to be able to make it through to the next stage of a World Cup," said Ponting Ponting ahead of the opening Super 12s match between Australia and New Zealand.

"And even one of their main players not making it to the flight to get over here for a World Cup... To me this sort of sums up probably how little these events mean to the West Indies players and if you look at the way that they played you'd say the same thing. Pooran and these guys, they're much better players than what we've seen over the last couple of weeks so no doubt there'll be some soul-searching done when they get back.

"They'll be as disappointed as anyone, it's easy for me to stand here and say that it's a disgrace that they haven't made it, but they'll be hurting as much as anybody. They would have had big thoughts and dreams coming here and they haven't played anywhere near well enough to even progress. So they have got some work to do."

West Indies will return to Australia next month for two Tests and Ponting is worried those games won't be competitive. West Indies haven't played a red-ball series Down Under since 2015-16 and haven't won a single Test since 1997.

"I didn't need to see that to make me more worried about the first couple of Test matches. But what's interesting with that, they've actually found a way, mainly at home I guess, in the last few years to be reasonably competitive on the Test front with Brathwaite… and Holder, he's done a really good job in Test cricket for them.

"But they're going to have to find a few lengths if they're going to compete against the Aussies with the current group that the Australians have got. If you just line them up on paper, there's no way you think that they could compete. Cricket's a funny game, but they're going to have to play out of their skins I think to make the first two Tests entertaining."