CAS­TRIES, St Lu­cia –West In­dies skip­per Rov­man Pow­ell ex­pressed his dis­ap­point­ment fol­low­ing the team’s re­cent strug­gles in the on­go­ing T20I se­ries against Eng­land, cit­ing re­cur­ring is­sues with los­ing wick­ets in clus­ters and sub­par field­ing.

Eng­land took full ad­van­tage of an­oth­er in­ept bat­ting per­for­mance by the West In­dies to claim a tense three-wick­et vic­to­ry in the third T20I and claim an unas­sail­able 3-0 lead in the best-of-five se­ries.

Speak­ing af­ter the lat­est game, Pow­ell high­light­ed the im­por­tance of im­prov­ing their ex­e­cu­tion in all as­pects of the game as they pre­pare for the fi­nal two match­es.

“I think it’s a bit dis­ap­point­ing; we keep los­ing wick­ets in clus­ters and in the pow­er­play. It’s a case of us be­ing our nat­ur­al selves.”

The Ja­maican em­pha­sized how ear­ly dis­missals have ham­pered the team’s abil­i­ty to build mo­men­tum. “The mid­dle overs get dif­fi­cult when you lose wick­ets, and what hap­pens is that you can’t go hard in the mid­dle overs when you lose wick­ets,” he ex­plained.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that the bowl­ing de­part­ment showed im­prove­ment in the most re­cent out­ing, Pow­ell called for greater con­sis­ten­cy. “The ex­e­cu­tion by the bowlers wasn’t prop­er in the pre­vi­ous games, but tonight (Thurs­day), the ex­e­cu­tion was bet­ter.”

Field­ing al­so came un­der scruti­ny, with Pow­ell urg­ing the team to step up their ef­forts. “The guys have to take more catch­es. Field­ing is a col­lec­tive ef­fort and we need to get bet­ter as in­di­vid­u­als.”

De­spite the chal­lenges, Pow­ell com­mend­ed Akeal Ho­sein for his stand­out per­for­mance, with the left-arm spin­ner bag­ging four wick­ets in the los­ing cause.

For Ho­sein, the per­for­mance was pleas­ing, but he would have liked for the end re­sult to be dif­fer­ent.

“It is a bit­ter­sweet mo­ment as it is al­ways good to get per­son­al per­for­mances, but for me, if it is not help­ing the team get over the line, it is bit­ter­sweet.”

Look­ing ahead to Sat­ur­day’s fourth match, Pow­ell re­mains op­ti­mistic about get­ting things right.

“Eng­land is a good team, we have two good games of crick­et re­main­ing and Sat­ur­day pro­vides us an op­por­tu­ni­ty to turn things around.”

CMC