PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Still buoyant from their historic series win, West Indies will seek to extend their new found dominance over England in the solitary Twenty20 International of the tour at the Queen’s Park Oval today.
Windies wrapped up a 1-0 win in the five-Test series on Tuesday, their first over their former colonial masters in 11 years and will hope to use this as a fillip in the 2pm encounter which has already been sold out.
They will be without influential captain and aggressive top order batsman Chris Gayle who is injured and his deputy Denesh Ramdin will lead the regional side for the first time in an international match, an experience the 24-year old said yesterday he was looking forward to.
“I am really excited. I like the leadership role and I know I will get the full support of everyone on and off the field,” said Ramdin who was elevated to the vice-captaincy role on the tour of New Zealand late last year.
West Indies hold the edge over England in recent head-to-head meetings, after they walloped England by 10 wickets in last year’s Stanford US$20 million winner-takes-all extravaganza.
When the two teams met in a two-match series on the Windies’ last tour to England in 2007, they drew 1-1 after the Caribbean side won the first match and lost the second at the Oval.
SQUADS:WEST INDIES – Denesh Ramdin, Lionel Baker, Sulieman Benn, Dwayne Bravo, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Fidel Edwards, Andre Fletcher, Keiron Pollard, Darren Sammy, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Lendl Simmons, Devon Smith, Jerome Taylor
ENGLAND – Andrew Strauss (captain), James Anderson, Gareth Batty, Ian Bell, Ravi Bopara, Stuart Broad, Paul Collingwood, Steven Davies, Andrew Flintoff, Stephen Harmison, Dimitri Mascarenhas, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior, Adil Rashid, Owais Shah, Amjad Khan.