SYD­NEY, Aus­tralia—For­mer Aus­tralia cap­tain Ricky Ponting has slammed West In­dies’ pre­ma­ture ex­it from the Twen­ty20 World Cup as a “dis­grace” and has ques­tioned the play­ers’ de­sire to rep­re­sent the Caribbean side at glob­al events.

Speak­ing be­fore the Su­per 12 main draw open­er be­tween Aus­tralia and New Zealand here Sat­ur­day, Ponting said the re­sult was dam­ag­ing for West In­dies crick­et over­all, es­pe­cial­ly with the side be­ing two-time for­mer cham­pi­ons.

“It’s a dis­grace. 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,” the Test and ODI leg­end was quot­ed as say­ing.

“And even one of their main play­ers (Shim­ron Het­my­er) 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.”

Bran­don King was the on­ly bats­man with a half-cen­tu­ry in the tour­na­ment, his un­beat­en 62 in the cru­cial do-or-die qual­i­fi­er against Ire­land go­ing in vain as West In­dies slumped to a chas­ten­ing nine-wick­et de­feat in Ho­bart on Fri­day.

Vet­er­an John­son Charles, who scored 45 in the 31-run win over Zim­bab­we last Wednes­day, fin­ished with 69 runs to join King as the on­ly two bats­men to muster an ag­gre­gate of over 50 runs.

Cap­tain Pooran gath­ered 25 runs from his three in­nings, un­der­scor­ing the ane­mic bat­ting which af­flict­ed West In­dies in the three qual­i­fiers.

“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,” Ponting point­ed out.

“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.”

And with West In­dies re­turn­ing Down Un­der next month for a two-Test se­ries in Perth and Ade­laide, Ponting ex­pressed con­cerns about their abil­i­ty to com­pete with a very strong home side.

“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,” he said.

“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.” (CMC)