Sydney: Australian legend Ricky Ponting has called the once-formidable West Indies’ early exit from the T20 World Cup a “disgrace”.
Two-time champions West Indies were knocked out of the tournament after their heavy defeat to Ireland, with their campaign lasting just three matches.
After an opening loss against Scotland in Hobart, West Indies eked out a victory over Zimbabwe before losing to Ireland in a winner-takes-it all game.
“It’s a disgrace,” Ponting said at the SCG ahead of the opening Super 12s match between Australia and New Zealand here on Saturday.
“It’s so bad for their cricket. They’ve got too much talent in that team and in West Indies cricket not to be able to make it through to the next stage of a World Cup.
“And even one of their main players not making it to the flight to get over here for a World Cup… To me this sort of sums up probably how little these events mean to the West Indies players and if you look at the way that they played you’d say the same thing.
“(Nicholas) Pooran and these guys, they’re much better players than what we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks so no doubt there’ll be some soul-searching done when they get back.
“They’ll be as disappointed as anyone, it’s easy for me to stand here and say that it’s a disgrace that they haven’t made it, but they’ll be hurting as much as anybody.
“They would have had big thoughts and dreams coming here and they haven’t played anywhere near well enough to even progress. So they have got some work to do.”
West Indies are scheduled to return to Australia next month for a two-Test series. The West Indies, who last played a Test series in Australia in 2015-16, have not won their since 1997.
“I didn’t need to see that to make me more worried about the first couple of Test matches,” Ponting said.
“But what’s interesting with that, they’ve actually found a way, mainly at home I guess, in the last few years to be reasonably competitive on the Test front with Brathwaite… and Holder, he’s done a really good job in Test cricket for them.
“But they’re going to have to find a few lengths if they’re going to compete against the Aussies with the current group that the Australians have got. If you just line them up on paper, there’s no way you think that they could compete.
“Cricket’s a funny game, but they’re going to have to play out of their skins I think to make the first two Tests entertaining.”
PTI
