Basseterre: Following the West Indies' humiliating 5-0 T20I series loss to Australia, skipper Shai Hope has switched his attention to the next task against Pakistan, according to the ICC's official website.
Shai Hope blamed his team's lack of consistency as the primary reason for the West Indies' series loss.
The captain was dissatisfied with the batting team's inability to produce a full performance, allowing Australia to easily chase down targets in both matches.
I didn't feel we gave a strong batting performance. We either performed nicely at first and then faded, or the other way around, according to the ICC's official website.
When competing against good opposition like Australia, you must put everything together to create a more complete game, he said.
The first three games of the series were notable for West Indies batsmen failing to take use of good starts.
In the opening, they were coasting at 123 for 1 in the 13th over before falling to 189. The second game followed a similar trend: despite a strong 63 for 0 start, they could only manage 172.
In the third game, a 125-run opening partnership was futile because the middle order failed to perform on a batting-friendly surface. In the previous two matches, West Indies had slow starts, forcing the middle order to work too hard.
As a batting team, we did not give ourselves the greatest opportunity to produce a significant total on a regular basis. And that's most likely where we fell short. We've always been one step behind the eight ball, he added.
A notable feature of this series was that the West Indies constantly set the bar, defying the popular notion that chasing is often the easier option in the Caribbean.
I believe that here in the Caribbean, we all know that chasing statistics is always the best thing to do, according to Hope.
Whether it is the dew or wind factor, you always have that scorecard in front of you, giving you an idea of how to approach the chase. But there is nothing I can do about it. Unfortunately, I did not win any (tosses). It's simply one of those things for us, he said.
The captain, on the other hand, commended his bowling squad for putting up a strong performance in what was a difficult series. He expressed optimism that the forthcoming series against Pakistan, which begins on July 31, would give the squad a great chance to build on the lessons learned from the Australia series.
I believe we are a little clearer in the bowling department, Shai Hope said.
I must nevertheless applaud the team for the effort they put in at the back end to provide us a chance to win the game. But after you don't have many runs on the scoreboard, you have to expect that everything will go properly in the field. It simply didn't work out for us, he said.
We undoubtedly performed much better than we did in the previous several games. We must put this one behind us and look forward to the Pakistan series to determine where we can achieve that synergy and success, he said.
