LEGENDARY West Indies captain, Sir Clive Lloyd, has voiced that the planning by the West Indies team at the ongoing World T20 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) leaves much to be desired.

Sir Clive, speaking Tuesday evening on a Barbadian radio programme, Mason and Guest, stated, “Their planning seems to be all over the place and I think if you look at what has happened – 55 runs, no, we are better than that.”

The former captain raised question marks over the team’s batting order against South Africa after their second successive loss in the title defence. In their opening match on Saturday, they were bundled out for 55 by England.

“Our planning seems to be terrible. We had a wonderful start (against South Africa) and we didn’t promote people in the proper order. You would expect the captain to come up when you are going at nine and over, to continue,” Sir Lloyd added.

“You send (Nicholas) Pooran who has not been playing well and you have (Shimron) Hetmyer who is batting quite well and making some very good scores. So, the batting order seems to be all over the place.”

West Indies has soaked up 106 dot balls (17.4 overs) out of the 34.2 overs they have batted to date and Sir Lloyd said the game plan seems just about hitting sixes.

“… Somewhere along the line we feel that this game is about hitting sixes (and) we are getting caught on the boundary, this is a big ground,” he estated.

Sir Lloyd contended that Four-Day cricket improves a player’s One-Day cricket, noting that “we have to play more Four-Day cricket. It improves your thinking, batting (and) timing.”

After the defeat to South Africa, captain Kieron Pollard refrained from pointing fingers at opening batsman Lendl Simmons who soaked up deliveries in painstakingly slow innings of 16 off 35 balls.

The defeat left the regional side winless and in deep trouble rooted at the bottom of Group One with just three matches remaining.

West Indies will have to win their remaining three matches in the preliminary phase to have a chance of advancing to the semi-finals.
The top teams in each of the two groups progress to the semi-finals.

West Indies will play Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Australia in their remaining matches.