“The main thing is how we bat our 50 overs…we have to bat 50 overs and put our innings together and partnerships together,” Simmons said two days out of the ODI series opener against India in Port-of-Spain. “Somebody has to be looking to score a hundred and hold the team together. Batting-wise that is it.”
Simmons, however, isn’t overly concerned by the bowling attack, which couldn’t bowl out Bangladesh once in the most recent three-match ODI series in Guyana, and the fielding.
“The bowling and the fielding has been improving daily,” he said. “We rank ourselves very highly on the fielding. The bowling, we had couple of games on those wickets where people might say we should’ve gotten more wickets but the wicket got better every time we fielded because they had put out the second roller on it and it had dried out from earlier in the day.
“So, the bowlers have been doing well and we have to continue restricting and getting wickets – that’s the only way we can keep totals low and continue to win games.”
“I can’t look past the batters here yet,” Simmons said. “I think you judge people on good wickets. We had good performances in Netherlands and good performances in Pakistan. You come [home] and you get indifferent wickets where guys have to fight for runs and we agree that we should’ve fought a little harder, but I can’t come down [on them]. Let’s see what happens. These wickets [at Queen’s Park Oval] look really good and let’s see how they play and we can judge them from this.”
“The first difference is that the surface here [in Port-of-Spain] looks like some work has been put into it,” Simmons said. “It has been prepared and it looks good. That is all you can go to…they are true wickets that we’re going to play these three games on and it looked really good the last couple of days we’ve been there, so [we will] wait and see how they play on Friday.
“You expect a better batting performance. I think we don’t really want to make any excuses and in the last game we showed what we should’ve shown in the first two games…I’m not hiding the fact that they were bad cricket wickets on the whole, but I expect different here. The wicket has looked good and yes it [India] is a stronger bowling team but we expect a better batting performance.”
“You have to let them [groundstaff across the Caribbean] know [about the sub-standard pitches],” Simmons said. “It’s not nice, it’s something that we’ve to work on throughout the Caribbean because the better wickets we get for our young players to grow up on, the better batsmen we get, the better fast bowlers and spinners we get. So, yes, it’s a conversation we have all the time.”
Simmons was pleased with Paul’s rehab although he said that the decision on his potential inclusion would only be taken on the eve of the first match against India.
“He has looked really well,” Simmons said. “He’s been going through his paces with the physio and the S&C [strength & conditioning coach] in the last couple of days we’ve been here. He looked really well today, but we can only make a decision tomorrow when we see again if he’s ready for the game, but he has progressed really well.”