BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Faced with a side ravaged by injury and boasting little one-day preparation, West Indies coach David Williams says every member of the squad will need to pull his weight if a series win Down Under is to be realized.
“I think we need to play as a team and every single member has got to pull their weight in order to beat this Australian side. You look at the squad and you have a lot of potential there but I think we’ve got to play smart and we’ve got to play intelligent,” Williams told reporters at the Grantley Adams International Airport on Thursday, as the squad prepared to leave for London en route to Sydney.
“They (Aussies) are experienced and we have got to play well as a team to beat them.”
Most of the squad have had a diet of four-day cricket playing in the WICB regional first class championship and while Williams admitted this was not idyllic, he believed the lead-up period to the start of the one-day series could be used to find suitable practice games.
“It’s not the ideal thing and we’ve just got to go with the itinerary that has been posted to us by the ICC … what we need to try and do is use the little momentum we have from the four-day series and try and take it into the one-day game,”
“Of course we have almost a week-and-a-half of preparation and that’s going to be very crucial for us.”
He added: “We’ll try to see if we can fit in two one-day games. Of course we have a one-day game against the [Prime Minister’s XI] but we want to try and fit in two 50-over games.
“It’s all about preparation, we’re going to work extremely hard. What we’re trying to do is see if we can get some outdoor pitches where we can have the guys doing a lot of game sense and stuff like that. It’s all down to preparation.”
West Indies are set to play five One-Day Internationals and two Twenty20 Internationals, following on from their three-Test tour Down Under late last year.
They open their tour in Melbourne on February 7 and will play ODIs in Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane before returning to Melbourne 12 days later. The two T20Is will be contested in Hobart and Sydney on February 21 and 23 respectively.
West Indies, however, will be without key players for this trip as the batting duo of Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shiv Chanderpaul are both out injured, along with the pace duo of Fidel Edwards and Jerome Taylor.
“I think the middle order is key. When you are missing guys like Sarwan and Shiv who bat at number three and four that’s a big hole and the experience they bring to the team as well,” Williams pointed out.
“But we’ve got the youngsters in there like Narsingh Deonarine and these guys that have proven they are able to do their job and we’ve given them the opportunity and hopefully they’ll come good for us.
Thirteen members of the squad flew out on Thursday evening to join captain Chris Gayle and vice-captain Dwayne Bravo who are already in Australia, after having campaigned in the Twenty20 Big Bash there recently.