T20 World Cup 2024: Powell wants his players to prioritise playing for WI over franchise cricket

Rovman Powell (Pic: File Pic)

The T20 World Cup 2024 campaign may have ended for West Indies, but skipper Rovman Powell hailed the side for bringing back the "buzz". He also stated that his players should prioritise national duty over featuring in franchise cricket.

Earlier, West Indies suffered disgrace in the last two T20 World Cup editions. In the ongoing T20 World Cup 2024, they fell short against South Africa in the Super 8 match.

"There's a buzz around the region now in playing for West Indies so hopefully that continues, hopefully, we continue on the right path," Powell said in the post-match interaction.

Powell acknowledged the allure and financial incentives of franchise cricket, which make it challenging for the West Indies, a smaller cricket board, to consistently field their best team.

"It's been good so far for the last year or two. Hopefully, guys can always and will mainly choose to play for West Indies."

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"It's always a case for me as a captain to continue to motivate guys to play for West Indies. The driving force of franchise cricket and the money that comes with franchise cricket make it always difficult for a small board like West Indies to field their best team," he added.

Rovman Powell also opened up on the T20I progress West Indies made in the last 12 months. "Not just this tournament but the cricket that we have played over the last 12 months to move from number nine in the world to number three in the ICC ranking is an absolutely amazing jump.

"It's for us as a team to continue working. It's for us as a team to stay still close, close-knit and it's for us as a team to just keep on building."

Powell also hoped that his side would come back stronger in the next edition of the T20 World Cup which will be co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka.

"Hopefully guys here can continue playing and doing well in international cricket and franchise cricket... And when that time comes, we'll have the same core of players trying to win a World Cup for the Caribbean."

South Africa did well to restrict West Indies to 135 for 8. In reply, the Proteas were 15 for 2 in two overs when rain disrupted proceedings for close to an hour.

But after the resumption, the Proteas batters went hammer and tongs to chase down the revised target of 123 in 17 overs with five balls to spare.

West Indies skipper Rovman Powell admitted that his side fell short of 20 runs on the pitch which got better after the rain rain interruption. "As a team, we played some good cricket. We play good cricket in patches and tonight our batters were 15-20 runs short on a difficult wicket," he said.

"The inclement weather isn't something we can control, especially when you're batting first. So, our plan was to be aggressive... We tried to transfer the pressure as a batting group, but it just didn't work."

"It wasn't the easiest off surface but as players, we have to adapt and come up with solutions. It needed a little bit more grit a little bit more determination..."

Powell said it became difficult for his spinners to grip the wet ball after rain. "We knew it was always going to be a little bit difficult with a wet ball especially for us with three spinners but having said that I think the guys, bowling group have to be commended only 130 on the board and I think they really fought for us."

Powell also feels that the Super 8 match loss against England cost them. "It was very disappointing for us as players but also it was a wake-up call because we were playing consistently good cricket so it showed us that hey on in T20 cricket, anything is possible," he added.

(With PTI Inputs)