An extended preparation plays key role behind Windies Test triumph: Simmons
Collected
|| Desk Report ||.
West Indies head coach Phil Simmons said that the expanded preparations they got after being arrival at England played a key role for his side to triumph a four-wicket win over the host in the first Test at Southampton.
The tourists arrived in England on June 9 after which they have trained in a bio-secure environment.
The tour opening Test the Caribbean side played against the home side and won by four wickets on the final day of the first five-dayer match which also marked the return of international cricket after the COVID-19 outbreak.
By virtue of winning the opener, West Indies now have 1-0 lead over England in the three-Test series.
“I think that has been the biggest influence on the performance,” said Phil Simmons, who fell into a muzzy situation to take part in a funeral ceremony of his relative during the day of the players’ practice in a bio-secure environment.
“The fact that we’ve been here for that period of time, we’ve had quality bowling in the nets because we’ve had nearly 11 seamers here, you can’t put a price on that,” Simmons said on the eve of the second Test starting at Old Trafford on Thursday.
“I don’t like to go back into my (playing) days, but we would come to England and play something like three or four proper warm-up games before the first Test, and we would also have three-day or four-day games in between the Test matches. So I think that period of training goes a long way to how we performed in that first Test,” he added.
Simmons praised the cricketers especially Jermaine Blackwoods for his astonishing 95 on the final day and pacer Shannon Gabriel’s nine-wicket haul in the match. He also issued a stark warning to his pupils to be on guard against the complacency.
“For me it was a great win because I think that it signified a lot of hard work being done by the players over the last four or five weeks. It was a top-class Test match, with good cricket played by both teams, and even coming down to the last hour, it could have gone either way,” Simmons said.
“But you guard against complacency by just trying to do the same things you did before the first Test. Right now that Test match is history. We’ve got to be thinking about what we do from Thursday to Monday,” the 57-year-old former all-rounder added.
He referred to the first Test win as “history” and urged all to focus on the second Test to win the series with one to spare.
“You don’t come to England and just win a Test match. Try to come out on top. It’s been great for us, and it was important because you don’t want to have to chase England in England. So the chasing is from their point of view now,” he said.
Simmons, in particular, praised highly fit-again pacer Gabriel, who was not in West Indies’ initial first 14, but after he proved his fitness he was later added to the squad who has returned from ankle surgery.
“The hardest time for bowlers, after bowling from the morning, is that last session,” the head coach said.
“To see him (Gabriel) and Alzarri (Joseph) come up trumps in that session is so pleasing to us. With him coming back from that ankle surgery and working as hard he has worked since we’ve been here, it was a joy to see him successful in that period,” he concluded.
