By Tony McWatt
The West Indies’ recently completed five-match T20 series against South Africa was the first stanza of a 15-match preparation build-up towards its forthcoming October 2021 title defence of the T20 World Cup Championship won three years ago. Now 10th in the ICC’s T20 rankings, the West Indies lost the series 2-3 to the sixth-ranked South Africans. Far more important than the actual series result, were the emerging questions surrounding the final composition of the West Indies squad for its T20 World Cup defence based on the performances, or lack thereof, by players in key positions.
The gist of these can be summarized in the following top five West Indies takeaways from a series that uncomfortably raised far more questions than it provided definitive answers.
1. With only 10 matches plus the 2021 CPL possibly now left to be played before the October T20 World Cup, based on their South Africa series performances Evin Lewis. skipper Kieron Pollard, Fabian Allen, Dwayne Bravo, and Obed McCoy are now the only five players who can be viewed as having guaranteed themselves their spots on the UAE-bound squad. Lendl Simmons, as Lewis’s opening batting partner, can arguably be added as a sixth but he still needs to show a much greater measure of consistency in the forthcoming series against the Aussies to absolutely guarantee his selection for the UAE. Simmons, who only played in the last three of the five matches, had scores of 22, 47 and three in his outings while featuring in opening partnerships of 55, 20 and 27 with Lewis.
