Coach Daren Sammy: West Indies must win titles again

TAROUBA: West Indies head coach Daren Sammy wants to transform the regional side from a series-winning team into a championship-winning outfit before the next T20 World Cup in 2026.

Sammy, the white-ball head coach, made his intentions clear as the Windies prepare to take on South Africa in a three-match T20 series beginning on August 23 at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy, Tarouba.

While the West Indies have won four of their last five T20 series, including handing South Africa a 3-0 whitewash in May, they were eliminated at the Super Eight stage by the Proteas in the recent T20 World Cup.

Sammy, who captained the West Indies to the 2012 and 2016 T20 World Cup titles, said the West Indies needed to be more consistent if they wanted to become world champions.

“We need to find ways to continuously evolve and improve. I want us to become a championship winning team.

“Right now we are a series-winning team. We play one team over a three or five-game period, and we know what to do, but I want this team to become a championship-winning team where we can play a different opposition in a tournament and be able to come up with the goods every single game.

“That’s where the focus of this team is, moving into another World Cup-preparing year. You know, we have a next World Cup to prepare for.

“As disappointing as it was being knocked out of the World Cup, but understanding what we accomplished as a team during the last 12-14 months, it is a continuation of that and fine-tuning ourselves.”

Despite his long-term goals, Sammy said winning the series against South Africa was still a main objective.

“I wouldn’t call it revenge, but it’s a great opportunity for us to regroup, refocus. It’s the first competitive international game since that quarterfinal in the World Cup, and one (in which) we want to start fine-tuning ourselves.

“Obviously winning the series is the optimum goal that we have, but just based on the preparation, there are areas we have identified as a coaching or tactical group that we need to improve on in order for us to win tournaments, and we want to start that right in this series. When we last played them with a similar team, we did win in Jamaica 3-0, but that’s history.

“It’s about moving forward and continuously putting performances that allow us to be victorious and fine-tuning some of the areas that we definitely need improving on.”

CMC