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West Indies players need to improve in all areas, trust in themselves for second Test and beyond - Simmons
Written by Leighton Levy. Posted in Windies. | 08 February 2021 | 1852 Views
Tags: Cricket, Bangladesh, Jermaine Blackwood, Joshua Da Silva, Kyle Mayers, Nkrumah Bonner, Phil Simmons, West Indies

West Indies coach Phil Simmons believes the team needs to improve in all areas going forward and especially if they are to win the second Test against Bangladesh set for the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium in Dhaka on Wednesday.

The West Indies pulled off an improbable win on Sunday’s final day of the first Test at Chattogram. Set a target of 395, the West Indies achieved pulled off the win thanks largely to a remarkable undefeated 210 from Kyle Mayers and obdurate knock of 86 from Nkrumah Bonner.

It was an incredible turnaround for the Caribbean men who trailed by 171 runs on the first innings after Bangladesh scored 430 and the West Indies replied with 259.

Simmons believes that the West Indies can use the performance in the match as an inspiration to do even better starting Wednesday.

“Every time you win it’s more important that you look at ways to improve, and that’s the way we are going to look at it,” said Simmons in a pre-Test press conference today.

“Yes, you’ve done things well but how do you improve on that? We have to make sure we improve in all aspects. We were not 100 per cent in all aspects. We still can do better with the ball. We still can limit them; instead of 400, you can limit them to 300-something.

“There are more than one thing to improve on and that is what we are going to focus on; how do we improve on the performance at Chattogram.”

The former Test opener said among the lessons the players need to take away from the match is that they need to trust in their own abilities.

“I will highlight the partnership in the first innings between (Jermaine) Blackwood and (Joshua) Da Silva where there was a lot of pressure put on us in that partnership and they trusted themselves and they came out of it,” Simmons said, in reference to the sixth-wicket partnership between the two batsmen that rescued the West Indies from 153 for 5 and allowed them to get to their first innings total of 259.

The partnership was significant considering that the West Indies lost their last five wickets for just six runs in 23 balls after Da Silva got out.

The coach then referred to the match-winning partnership between Kyle Mayers and Nkrumah Bonner.

“There was a lot of pressure put on Mayers and Bonner for a period when they had to trust their ability. They had to believe in themselves and I think that is the biggest takeaway from this, that in the times of challenges, they trusted their ability and they fought through it,” Simmons said.

“We had to grind through it we did that.”