Head coach Phil Simmons holds West Indies' batting under the scanner for recent series defeat

After suffering a whitewash in the ODI series at the hands of the Indian team, the West Indies head coach, Phil Simmons, lamented his side's batting, which led to their undoing. 

As West Indies failed to bat 50 overs and could not even reach the 200-run mark in each of the ODIs, their batters' struggles are quite evident. However, the series loss against India did not surprise many as the Caribbean side has been dull, to say the least in the format lately.

Simmons lambasted the batters and admitted that their consistent poor show dented their chances of winning the last two games.

"It does need urgent attention because it has lost us the last two games. When you bowl India out for 230 and 260, you expect to chase it. Under a year ago, we were cruising to 280-290 against Sri Lanka who have similar spinners. So batting is a huge concern and people have to stand up now as we go into our next set of ODIs in June," Simmons was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.

Further expressing his shock over the mode of dismissals, Simmons termed the series loss against India as "hurtful".

"We are a little bit further ahead with our batting assessments in T20s than we are in ODIs. The mode of dismissals are I think the biggest issue. It doesn't make for good watching. We can't keep going like this. We started putting things together last year when we played Sri Lanka and Australia, but this one is hard to swallow. Though I'm not someone who shows emotions outwardly, it's hurtful and the players know that," he added.

Simmons emphasised how game awareness is critical, citing Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant's example. But on the other hand, West Indies' batters did not apply themselves better and often panicked in crucial stages.

"It's a simple thing, we've got to assess situations and play according to it. Most guys batting in the top six have Test hundreds, so they can bat. We saw how Shreyas [Iyer] and [Rishabh] Pant batted when they were in trouble. They assessed the situation and batted for a while. We can't be 100 for 6 in 20 overs, that is the crux of the matter," Simmons mentioned.

Simmons also touched upon the effects of closing down the High Performance Centre (HPC) in Barbados. He acknowledged that shutting HPC has added to West Indies' batting woes. 

"That is one of the downfalls of us having closed down the HPC and it's something that was working for us. But there have been discussions on getting something like that back up and running. It's something everyone believes is needed in the Caribbean and it's in the pipeline, but as we know, the board is not flush [financially], so things take little longer to put together. We all know it's urgent. It's something that is needed in our cricket. Unfortunately, a lot of things are urgent, some more priority than the others. All I know for now is we all think it's urgent and it is being treated as that," Simmons concluded.