His team selection came under close scrutiny, as he opted to leave out both Boyd Rankin and Andrew White, while Paul Stirling remained on the sidelines. Simmons explained the rationale behind his line-up, “I need Boyd (Rankin) to get wickets up front. If he doesn’t do that, then I need to give somebody else a chance. Peter Connell was given an opportunity, but he didn’t bowl well. That first over set the tone for a poor bowling display.”
“Paul Stirling is still only 18, and has a big future in the game. I’ll be meeting with the captain (William Porterfield), and Kyle (McCallan) over the next few days and discuss what we reckon will be the best line-up to give us the best chance against Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Andrew White batted exceptionally well against India the other night, and was unlucky to miss out yesterday. It may well be the case he’ll be recalled, but we’ll see.”
“The key to matches in this format of the game is early wickets. We keep losing too many early on, while not picking up enough. Against New Zealand, in spite of their flying start (32-0 after two overs), we were only seven or eight runs behind them at the eight over mark, but we had lost four wickets. If you have wickets in hand, you can score a lot of runs in the last few overs. I was happy with the rate we were scoring at, but not happy with the wickets that we lost. We can score 170 if we have wickets in hand and pace ourselves properly.”
“Against the big teams, you’ve got to take early wickets or you’re in trouble. You saw how South Africa did that last night in their comfortable win over England. They got into them, and put them under pressure right away.”
Looking ahead to the next two Super Eight fixtures, Simmons revealed good news about Niall O’Brien’s scan. “There’s nothing untoward in the scan. Just a bit of bruising, so he’ll be fine. We have a few niggles and a bit of tiredness but you’ve got to expect that in a major tournament. We’ve played nine games in 3 weeks now, and that takes its toll. But it’s good for the team. It’s a nice problem to have a lot of games. That’s what we’re always calling for – games against top quality opposition. We’ve been through this before when we played a lot of cricket in the World Cup Qualifiers in South Africa. The players become accustomed to what top quality teams have to go through.”
“We travel down to London today, and the players will have the rest of the day off to recuperate before training on Saturday, and the games with Sri Lanka and Pakistan. It’s not going to be easy, but as we’ve shown in the past, we are a capable team and capable of producing another shock. We beat Pakistan in 2007, and I’m sure they’ll want to avenge that result.”
“Teams don’t under-estimate us now, so we’ve lost the surprise factor, which made the win over Bangladesh all the more satisfying. There’s an expectation now, and we weren’t surprised at all by our win, although people outside of cricket may have been. Our spirits are high, and we’ll stick together as a team. It’s a learning experience for us, and we’ll become a better team as a result of our participation in this ICC World Twenty20.”
