We just didn’t turn up against Ireland: Phil Simmons

Leading into the tournament, there wasn’t any sort of extravagant expectations from the two-time champions, West Indies. While most of the fans believed that getting past the qualifiers would be an easy task for the two-time champions, it was far away from that. The Men in Maroon kicked the tournament off in the worst possible manner, with a staggering loss against Scotland. 

Later, they did salvage a win against Zimbabwe but cometh the decider, they collapsed to the parading Irish side, crashing out of the tournament. Windies’ head coach Phil Simmons minced no words in his analysis of the team’s fortunes, stating that “we just didn’t turn up”. 

"I think the assessment is that we just didn't turn up today. We started well with the bat, but we just didn't continue. I think when you sum it up, we were outplayed in all departments today. They bowled well. We batted well at the start but didn't carry on, and they just batted well and batted us out of the game,” Simmons minced no words in the post-match presentation on his team’s fortunes. 

T20 format has been considered as one of the rare formats where the Men in Maroon had a slight edge over the others. However, owing to the bigger boundaries and their inability to rotate strike, West Indies were dumped early out of the tournament. 

"Yeah, that's how things are. I think we haven't been playing good enough cricket to be there. We have the batsmen, the capabilities, we just haven't been putting it together. Our bowlers are showing up nine out of ten times, but the batters haven't really shown up," Simmons said.

Despite a positive start, their batting yet again let them down against Ireland, as they only could post a total of 146, which was chased down in 17.3 overs by the European side. 

"I think all the batters will be disappointed in what they've produced, not just at the World Cup but just before the World Cup and everything like that. We need to go back, and batsmen need to take a look at themselves and work out how we score 170, 180 runs to be in the game because the bowlers are doing their job," he added.

With that loss, the two-time champions are no longer part of the T20 World Cup in Australia, crashing in just the qualifier stage, for the first time in the history of the competition.