“And even one of their main players not making it to the flight to get over here for a World Cup… To me this sort of sums up probably how little these events mean to the West Indies players and if you look at the way that they played you’d say the same thing. [Nicholas] Pooran and these guys, they’re much better players than what we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks so no doubt there’ll be some soul-searching done when they get back.

“They’re much better players than what we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks so no doubt there’ll be some soul-searching done when they get back.”

Ponting on West Indies’ early exit from the World Cup

“They’ll be as disappointed as anyone, it’s easy for me to stand here and say that it’s a disgrace that they haven’t made it, but they’ll be hurting as much as anybody. They would have had big thoughts and dreams coming here and they haven’t played anywhere near well enough to even progress. So they have got some work to do.”

“I didn’t need to see that to make me more worried about the first couple of Test matches,” Ponting said. “But what’s interesting with that, they’ve actually found a way, mainly at home I guess, in the last few years to be reasonably competitive on the Test front with Brathwaite… and Holder, he’s done a really good job in Test cricket for them.

“But they’re going to have to find a few lengths if they’re going to compete against the Aussies with the current group that the Australians have got. If you just line them up on paper, there’s no way you think that they could compete. Cricket’s a funny game, but they’re going to have to play out of their skins I think to make the first two Tests entertaining.”