West Indies are set to embark on another Test series and head coach, Phil Simmons is once again putting the batting at the forefront of his concerns.
West Indies will play Pakistan in two Tests, the first of which bowls off on Thursday in Jamaica and during yesterday’s press conference, Simmons suggested that the team needs to score in excess of 400 consistently.
“It’s the start of a new series and we are looking and trying to the best of our abilities to try and make sure things improve and I think there is no hiding from the fact that our batting needs to improve and get to a healthy stage where we can score 400 in an innings on a more consistent basis and the bowlers continue doing their job that they are doing well for us to go higher up so we are putting everything in to make sure our batting improve,” he said.
Since the start of 2021, the West Indies, in 12 innings, only once tallied over 400.
Two innings were in excess of 350. However, five times they were bowled out for under 200 runs.
Simmons reasoned that the top order needs to start scoring centuries in order to give the bowlers a fighting chance.
“We are looking at every aspect of the game but moreso…we want our batsmen to be scoring 100, 150 runs on each occasion and you have one of your five or six batsmen getting a big hundred then we are doing the right things and are giving the bowlers a chance to bowl teams out.”
In those 12 innings, three centuries have been scored including a double ton from Kyle Mayers while 13 times batsmen have passed 50 but did not convert to centuries.
Simmons underscored the importance of the batting coming good, especially after labelling themselves as underdogs in the upcoming series with the visitors in good form.
“Going through the years we have always had tough battles with Pakistan, with any Pakistan team that comes to the Caribbean or we go there so it is going to be another tough series and as you said they won their last two Tests and played their last two Test series well and are coming here on a high whereas we played well in a couple Test series and the last we didn’t play so well so even though we are home we are a little bit of an underdog in this but we are going to try to put everything into it and make sure that we come out on top,” said Simmons.
Pakistan has won four of their five Tests this year, including two over South Africa who handed West Indies their only two losses this year. West Indies also played to a draw in both Tests against Sri Lanka and defeated Bangladesh twice.
