Did West Indies Lose Purposefully? Captain Shai Hope Backstabs His Team After World Cup Qualifier Elimination

A distraught Shai Hope questioned his teammates’ attitude and match preparedness after West Indies’ shocking defeat against Scotland on Saturday (July 1) in the ongoing ICC World Cup Qualifiers 2023.

The defeat has ruled West Indies out of the race for a World Cup spot. West Indies, who won the first two editions of the ODI World Cup in 1975 and 1979, will miss the 50-over World Cup for the first time in its history. West Indies cricket has been going in the wrong direction for quite some time now and the latest defeat is definitely one of their lowest points.

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After the loss to the Netherlands in the group stage, the Shai Hope-led side needed to win the game against Scotland to stay in contention for a semifinal spot. However, the Caribbean outfit ended up losing the Super Six game by seven wickets. West Indies, who failed to defend 374 against the Netherlands before losing the Super Over, once again failed to do well with the bat and ball.

Asked to bat first, West Indies were all out for 181 runs inside 44 overs. Jason Holder (45) was the only player who managed to cross the 40-run mark. In reply, Scotland lost the opener, Christopher McBride, for a golden duck before the fifties from Matthew Cross and Brandon McMullen set up an easy and famous win for them.

Shai Hope opens up on the loss:

Speaking after the disastrous defeat, Shai Hope could not stop himself from questioning his teammates. The West Indies skipper was struggling to find the exact reason behind the defeat before admitting that the team let itself down in the entire competition.

“To be honest, it’s not one thing I can put my finger on. We certainly let ourselves down in the tournament,” Hope told the broadcaster.

“It really has to do with the attitude. The fielding is an attitude according to me, catches will be dropped and misfields will happen, that’s a part of the game and I feel that we did not give 100 percent effort every time, we did it in patches.

“It starts with the foundation — from back home, the preparation needs to be better. We cannot come here and expect to be an elite team without preparation. You can’t expect to wake up one morning and be a great team,” he added.

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Speaking further, Hope stated that his team needed to do well with the bat early on in the innings. Ruing the team’s disastrous performance, he also admitted that the team needed to give the fans something to cheer about during the competition.

“We need to look at how we start our innings definitely,” said Hope.

“We knew it would be challenging. The toss is always crucial but we need to find a way to counter that early movement. Every single captain who wins the toss here decides to bowl first and we needed to counter that early morning moisture. We need to give the West Indian fans something to cheer about,” he added.

With the World Cup spot out of reach, West Indies will be looking to bow out of the competition on a high.

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