Simmons shrugs off favourites tag
AFGHANISTAN coach Phil Simmons, who played in 26 Tests and 143 ODIs for the Windies from 1987 to 1999, has shrugged off the “favourites” tag for his team in the ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier.
Simmons, a former Zimbabwe coach, is now in charge of the Asians.
“I am not putting the ‘favourites’ tag on me. We have just come here to play cricket, we need to play proper cricket and win this tournament.
“I am one of those who wants to win all the time, and I think these guys are the same. So, the more we will win, the easier it will get for us in the Super Six stage. You win the Super Six stage, you are in the World Cup as well as in the final. That’s how we look at it.”
Afghanistan will take on Scotland in their opening match at the Bulawayo Athletic tomorrow, and Simmons admitted he was not fully satisfied with his side’s performance in the warm-up matches.
“We haven’t done a lot of things we wanted to do in the warm-up matches. But, at the same time, the boys have been sharp in Sharjah and I am sure the sharpness is still there, maybe a bit of jet-lag but we will get there.
‘’Hopefully, we will be able to put everything together come Sunday. “All of us are looking forward to the tournament. It’s good that it is being held in high esteem, but you have to come out and do it. We had two good outings in the warm-up games and now it’s about business. So, we are looking forward to Sunday.”
Windies coach Stuart Law has said his side will have to be smarter in approach.
“It is not going to be making 300 plus and then bowling teams out. It is going to be working out how to get to 180 to 220 and then deciding how to get the 10 wickets.
‘’ To be honest, the wickets (in the warm-up matches) weren’t as conducive as we want to play and so just have to come up with different ways to go about it.
“We do target 300-plus as we found in New Zealand, that’s probably a benchmark score these days in One-Day Internationals.
‘’Here, we have to lower that target just to make sure we are safe to play better cricket or make better decisions out in the middle and get the job done,” said Law yesterday.
He said the wickets could held the Associate nations.
“The strength of lot of Associate teams is based around spin and the quicks they have seem to be pretty reasonable as well. We can’t just go out and blast and dominate against these attacks. We have to be a little smarter to go about it.
“Our bowlers have been consistently taking wickets upfront and we have a good mix of off-spin, left-arm spin and leg-spin. I think it is a well-balanced attack that we take into each game.” — ICC