Barras coach disappointed, team to reset

PAPUA New Guinea men’s cricket team head coach Mark Coles says their last two fixtures in the Cricket World Cup League 2 in Nepal were disappointing but he aims to patch the team up before leaving for Namibia on Wednesday.
The Barramundis suffered two back-to-back losses last week, a nine-wicket loss to Nepal and a six-wicket loss to the United Arab Emirates which Coles described as terrible.
He said the team would work on the grey areas before their campaign in Namibia for their one-day-international (ODI) status.
“Last two games were pretty disappointing, we lost against Nepal and the disappointing way that we finished against UAE so there’s lot of room for improvements going towards Namibia,” Coles told The National.
“We know how tough it’s going to be especially with all the teams going to Namibia with the same goal which is to retain their ODI status.
“But we have shown some glimpses in the UAE and in Nepal as to what we can do, it’s just about fine tuning that and being more consistent.”
Coles said he was impressed with skipper Assad Vala for scoring some runs in their recent tour in Nepal as well as the previous tour in Dubai.
“The great thing about where we are is that the top order (batsmen) have all contributed in some way across all games which is great,” said Coles.
“We’ve also seen three of our bowlers in the last games have taken five wickets which is also a positive sign. We just need to be more consistent and more demanding on ourselves when we get into difficult situations and go in to the things we know rather than the things we don’t know or have haven’t done, so it’s concentrating on our core skills.”