West Indies Coach Phil Simmons on Wednesday acknowledged the poor quality of some pitches across the region as he expressed confidence that what appear to be good surfaces in Trinidad will produce better results when the men in maroon take on India in the upcoming CG United ODI series.
The pitch at the Guyana National Stadium came under scrutiny in the last ODI series which the West Indies lost to Bangladesh last weekend.
The Caribbean side partly blamed the surface which was helpful to Bangladesh’s spinners but put the batsmen at a disadvantage, as they struggled to put big scores on the board — 149 in the opening match, followed by 108 in the second which was the second lowest-ever against Bangladesh, and 178 in the third and final match of the series.
“In the last game we showed what we should have shown in the first two games on what were…bad cricket wickets on the whole,” Simmons said in an interview here, where the squad is training ahead of the three-match series starting on Friday at the Queen’s Park Oval.
Responding to queries about whether groundsmen were being informed of the recurring complaints about pitches generally, Simmons responded: “You have to let them know it’s unacceptable, it’s not nice. It’s something that we throughout the Caribbean have to work on 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 it’s a conversation we have all the time.”