Sammy’s stinging verdict: Batsmen must “stand up” after Wellington wobble
WELLINGTON, New Zealand – A visibly frustrated West Indies head coach Daren Sammy dissected another damaging collapse, labelling his team’s nine-wicket defeat to New Zealand in the second Test as a case of “two steps backwards.”The tourists, utterly outplayed inside three days at the Basin Reserve, were skittled for 205 and a paltry 128, leaving the Black Caps a trivial target.While the bowlers shared the wickets in New Zealand’s first innings, with fast bowler Anderson Phillip finishing with four in the match, the batting frailties were terminal.
Shai Hope’s 47 and John Campbell’s 44 were the highest scores of a dismal collective effort, leaving Sammy to draw a painful parallel with a past failure on New Zealand soil.“It shows every time we try to take a step forward, we take about two steps backwards,” Sammy stated. “It takes me back to 2013, where we drew the Test in Dunedin, came here, and lost inside three days. It’s just the consistency that we’re looking for.”The coach pinpointed a familiar foe: a failure to seize crucial moments. “We keep getting ourselves in good positions, but little moments switch the momentum, and in this Test match, once we lost the momentum, we lost it for a long period of time.”
While praising a relentless New Zealand attack that “answered the call,” Sammy’s sharpest criticism was reserved for his own batting line-up. He delivered a blunt assessment of their failure to support a battling bowling unit.“In a team, you want people to step up when needed the most. In this Test match, nobody stood up for us,” he said. “When you have runs not coming from the number seven and the number five positions, it puts a lot of pressure on the rest of the team. The bowlers are doing their job. It’s not the bowlers’ fault. I think it’s the batsmen that have to take more responsibility.”
