HARARE, Zim­bab­we – Head coach Dar­ren Sam­my said Tues­day, West In­dies’ fail­ure to de­fend 374 against min­nows the Nether­lands and their shod­dy field­ing through­out the en­tire tour­na­ment, was a “true re­flec­tion” of the state of af­fairs sur­round­ing the Caribbean side.

In a frank as­sess­ment fol­low­ing West In­dies’ shock de­feat to the Dutch in the ICC World Cup Qual­i­fiers on Mon­day, Sam­my slammed his side as the “worst field­ing team” in the cam­paign, con­tend­ing they were not ex­press­ing them­selves like a qual­i­ty in­ter­na­tion­al side.

“[At the] halfway stage [and with] 375 on the board, I thought the bat­ters did ex­cel­lent­ly but again it shows you where we are as a team,” said Sam­my who took over the helm of the white-ball squad last month.

“We were kind of poor tac­ti­cal­ly. We didn’t stick to the plans as long as pos­si­ble and we just thought be­cause we had 375 on the board that we should win, but crick­et is not played like this.

“And it’s a les­son for us that you can’t take any game of crick­et for grant­ed.”

He con­tin­ued: “I am a very pos­i­tive thinker and I un­der­stand the jour­ney that I have to take with this team. Some­times you’ve got to reach rock bot­tom to come back up.

“I un­der­stand the chal­lenges ahead and I al­so un­der­stand that things will not change overnight and it’s a true re­flec­tion of where our crick­et is at the mo­ment and we have a lot of work to do.”

West In­dies ap­peared out of sight when they rat­tled up 374 for six off their 50 overs but then watched as the Nether­lands pro­duced a su­perb run chase to tie the scores, cour­tesy of Te­ja Nidama­nu­ru’s 111 off 76 balls.

Lo­gan van Beek then blast­ed 30 runs from Ja­son Hold­er’s su­per-over be­fore tak­ing up the ball to de­fend the tar­get, as West In­dies lost their sec­ond on the trot fol­low­ing last week­end’s de­feat to Zim­bab­we.

“We keep on drop­ping catch­es and com­ing down to the end, some of the de­ci­sions we made, it makes you ques­tion what was go­ing on,” Sam­my lament­ed.

“Again, like when we played Zim­bab­we, we re­al­ly did not de­serve to win with that dis­play in the sec­ond half. It was re­al­ly poor. Cred­it must go to the Nether­lands … the way they bat­ted and they stuck to it.”

He con­tin­ued: “For years peo­ple have been say­ing we’re a bound­ary-hit­ting team and scor­ing off more balls is one of the big el­e­ments we have to im­prove on in all for­mats of the white-ball game and again, just be­ing hun­gry.

“Even in the field, so far I can safe­ly say we’re the worst field­ing team in this com­pe­ti­tion and I speak the truth and I’ll tell the guys that.

“We can­not con­tin­ue dis­play­ing this type of be­hav­iour and at­ti­tude on a crick­et field and call our­selves an in­ter­na­tion­al team. Every oth­er team there’s en­er­gy, there are a lot of things that we’re sup­posed to be do­ing nat­u­ral­ly be­cause it’s a pro­fes­sion­al sport.

“But again I say, it’s a true re­flec­tion of where we are as a team and the stuff we have to do to move for­ward.”

The de­feat left West In­dies in a pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion, with­out a sin­gle point de­spite reach­ing the Su­per Six stage and need­ing to win all three of their next match­es in or­der to reach the World Cup in In­dia lat­er in the year.

“We’ve put our­selves there, we’ve got our­selves to blame. Two cru­cial match­es with points on of­fer, we found our­selves in good po­si­tions and we let it slip,” Sam­my said.

“So again, it’s a true re­flec­tion of where we are as a team and in or­der for this train to move for­ward, a lot of things have to change.”

CMC