LONDON, England, CMC – West Indies are set to enter the ICC World Twenty20 Super Eights with their big-hitting captain Chris Gayle and full
of confidence when they face India at Lord’s this evening.
Gayle, who missed Wednesday’s match against Sri Lanka because of a sore
knee, returns to the line-up and coach John Dyson said yesterday his team was eagerly looking ahead to the match against the defending champions
as they seek a place in the semi-finals.
“I am looking forward to tomorrow, we all are. It is an exciting phase of the tournament. Our players are ready to show they are exciting players
and want to win,” Dyson said.
Match time for the day/night fixture Friday is 5:30 pm (12:30 pm Eastern
Caribbean Time/11:30 am Jamaica Time).
West Indies opted out of a training session yesterday as they arrived late afternoon from Nottingham and instead decided to have a gym and pool session at the team hotel.
Gayle is an automatic target for the Indians since because of his destructive batting and India’s captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni conceded yesterday that it is hard to prepare for the powerful left-hander..
“You don’t need to plan too much for him (Gayle) as you can’t have a field positioned outside the ropes,” Dhoni pointed out, when asked what was the best way to keep Gayle quiet.
“He will always fancy taking risks, so we should not give him the space,” Dhoni added.
But Dhoni respects other batsmen in the Caribbean side and believes it would be a mistake to focus only on Gayle.
“Gayle, (Dwayne) Bravo, (Shivnarine) Chanderpaul, (Ramnaresh) Sarwan can all hit big. But our bowlers are experienced too and will need to bowl tight,” Dhoni said.
Pacer Zaheer Khan will spearhead India’s bowling and acknowledges Gayle’s dismissal among some early wickets would be important for them.
“It will be good if we can get early wickets against the West Indies. Removing Gayle will be a great advantage for us,” said Zaheer, who returned from a shoulder injury to take four wickets against Ireland on Wednesday.
In the first round, West Indies beat Australia by seven wickets and lost to
Sri Lanka by 15 runs on Wednesday to finish second in Group C.
In the match against Sri Lanka on Wednesday, medium-pacer Lendl Simmons was the surprise package with four wickets in three overs.
“Simmons had an excellent game against Sri Lanka and his capabilities with the ball are something we have to seriously consider.
What we look for is someone who can bowl four overs at a super economy rate to put pressure on the scoring and chipping in with a few wickets as well,” Dyson added.
“Our performances have been good. The game against Australia we were
excellent and even though we lost to Sri Lanka, we did enough good things to let us know the momentum is still there.”
Dyson added: “ India are a good team, we know that. There is pressure on being the tournament favourites, I think they might feel that pressure. As I
have said all along, everyone is capable of beating anyone on their day. If we
have a great day it will be difficult for India.”
TEAMS:WEST INDIES – Chris Gayle (captain), Denesh Ramdin (vice captain), Lionel Baker, Sulieman Benn, Dave Bernard, Dwayne Bravo, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Fidel Edwards, Andre Fletcher, Xavier Marshall, Kieron Pollard, Darren Sammy, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Lendl Simmons, Jerome Taylor
INDIA – Mahendra Dhoni (captain), Gautum Gambhir, Harbhajan Singh,
Ravindra Jadeja, Dinesh Karthik, Zaheer Khan, Praveen Kumar, Pragyan
Ojha, Irfan Pathan, Yusuf Pathan, Suresh Raina, Ishant Sharma, Rohit Sharma, RP Singh, Yuvraj Singh.