Its cricket intelligence thats needed
Tue, Apr 12, '22
IN A recent article by Jonathan Ramnanansingh, Phil Simmons has explained the limitations of the West Indian white-ball cricket team, hence, a skills camp underway at Coolidge Cricket Ground in Antigua.
I’m quite surprised that at the international level, players don’t have the skills to partake in a limited-overs game. According to the article, Simmons believes this camp plays an instrumental role in guiding his players to becoming more all-around and consistent batsmen at the T20 and One-Day International levels.
As far as I could envisage, the batsmen have the skills to bat; what they lack, however, is the Cricket Intelligence (CI) to play an innings. Every innings a batsman — by this I mean anyone going in to bat for a team, whether at one or 11 in the batting order — has to determine what is required. Every innings is distinct according to the flow and situation of the game.
Skill is the ability to bat, to perform as a batsman. However, a batsman could be orthodox and look like a matchwinner in the nets but might be quite useless in a game. This is what I’m getting at, regardless of how long one spends in a camp, it would not give him the ability to bat successfully in a match.
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