West Indies, two-time former champions, are going to be absent from an ODI World Cup for the first time when the tournament takes place in India later this year. The issues for West Indies start from the foundation of the game back home, captain Shai Hope said after the defeat to Scotland ended their qualification hopes in Harare on Saturday, adding that "we can't come here and expect to be an elite team without that backing and preparation".
"It starts from the foundation. Preparation needs to be better. That's from back home," Hope told Ian Bishop on the official broadcast. "So, yeah, it starts from there. We can't just expect to wake up one morning and be a great team. There's a lot of things that we need to focus on. And yeah, we need to control (what) we can control. Right now, we are here playing cricket, and we need to make sure we give our all to the West Indian fans."
West Indies came into the Super Six stage of the qualifying event in Zimbabwe without any points from the group stage, having lost to Zimbabwe and Netherlands, the two teams to move up from the same group. That meant they had to win every Super Six game to stand a chance, but fell short at the first hurdle, putting up a lacklustre show against Scotland to lose by seven wickets.
"To be honest, it's not one thing [I can] put my finger on. We definitely need to look at all the areas," Hope said when asked if he knew where West Indies fell short. "Certainly, I felt we let ourselves down here in the entire tournament. But yeah, we need to look at the way we start our innings [and] definitely the fielding."
The fielding has been one of the biggest concerns for the team, and the pedestrian performance against Zimbabwe earlier in the tournament - where catches went down frequently and there were misfields galore - even invited harsh words from Daren Sammy, the coach, and Hope.
"I probably have to say [it's] the mindset - fielding is really and truly an attitude, in my opinion, and I think we need to give a bigger effort, especially with the attitude," Hope said. "Catches will be dropped, misfields will happen, it's part of the game, but the effort needs to remain. I don't think we gave that 100% effort every single time. We did it in patches, but we certainly need to improve in that."
Against Scotland, West Indies lost the toss and were asked to bat. They were 30 for 4 inside seven overs, as the Scotland quicks - led by Brandon McMullen - struck at will, almost, and then reached 81 for 6, their top-six batters gone, in the 21st over. There was a fightback after that, but not one of note.
"We knew the conditions were definitely in the bowlers' favour; the toss is really crucial here - we see every single captain [that] wins the toss elects to field first," Hope said. "So we need to find ways to negate that early-morning movement. [But] again, we can't really look at the past, we need to look at ways to move forward and get better.
"We know there's two more games left. We need to find a way to bounce back, finish the tournament positively at least.
"We need to make sure we transfer the talent [back home] into consistent performances and that's the only way we can rise in the rankings."