T20: Agony in the desert

Coach Arnold Manders has refused to give up on Bermuda’s World Twenty20 dream — but warned his players they need to urgently up their game.

Bermuda crashed to a third-straight defeat yesterday at the ICC Academy in Dubai, going down by seven wickets to Kenya in a qualifying match reduced to 18 overs because of some rare UAE rain.

The loss leaves us in seventh place in Group B, with must-win games against Nepal on Saturday and Papua New Guinea on Sunday remaining. 

A top-five finish would get them into the playoffs and keep our hopes  of making the finals in Bangladesh in 2014 alive.

Against Kenya, Bermuda were under pressure early on, collapsing to 77 for six before finishing on 124 for seven. Only David Hemp (30 not out) offered any real prospect of a telling score.

In Kenya’s reply, Malachi Jones claimed Alex Obanda for a duck early on but any momentum quickly evaporated as 42-year-old Steve Tikolo (54 no) took the game away from Bermuda, wrapping up the win with more than six overs remaining.

Manders told the Bermuda Sun: “It’s disappointing. Scotland was a good result and then we beat Denmark but we’ve come up against good opposition after that. 

“Our medium pacers let us down and Kenya got off to a flyer. The top order has struggled but we should still be scoring runs down the middle  — we have only had one guy get a half century.”

Manders pointed out that Bermuda have had to deal with a sandstorm against Netherlands and then the unexpected damp conditions yesterday, which saw them put into bat. 

However, he said: “We’re not working our way through these things — in the sandstorm with 30-40mph winds we were still trying to hit into it!”

At the top of the coach’s concerns remains the wayward frontline bowling — a fault he believes is giving the team little chance of defending small totals.

He added: “We are still are not applying ourselves. Our medium pacers are struggling to contain them and then our spinners have to come in early. Our bowlers have been better than I expected and our spinners have done extremely well.

“But the medium pacers need to stop leaking runs early. When they are chasing a total of 124 and they score 60 off the first five or six overs, it’s all over.”

Today is a training day for the team and Manders says he will focus on restoring confidence. 

He said: “They have got all the video footage, all the coaching points, they just need to apply it on the field. We have to win both and hope other teams lose, which is what is happening — this group is wide open.

“There’s still hope but the bowlers have got to step it up and get out there and get the two wins.”