The initial approach of the England Lions team will be to exploit the Guyanese batting weaknesses and put them under pressure, according to their head coach Mick Newell.
Newell, speaking with reporters during his team’s first practice session at the Guyana National Stadium yesterday, revealed that this will be achieved with solid batting and the need to take 20 wickets by his bowlers. He mentioned 24-year-old right arm pacer Jade Winston Dermbach, who is second behind CCC’s Ryan Austin (18) with 17 wickets from three games, as a key element with the ball.
“…put a lot of runs on the board, Dernbach has been a pretty effective quick bowler for us and we’ve got two spinners playing most of the times, so we are looking to put together a pretty balanced team and see if we can get on top of the opposition that way.
“Obviously there are some key players missing for the Guyana team and that is reflected in the scores that they have been putting together so we would see that as an area we would like to exploit and get on top of Guyana especially when they bat and try and put them under pressure but we have not won a game in a number of weeks and so we have got to work hard at getting 20 wickets,” the 46-year-old coach explained.
Newell, who played 102 First Class matches for Nottinghamshire, acknowledged that his side, which stands in third place in the points table with 30 points, is unaware of the pitch conditions in Guyana but the aim will still be to strike a decisive blow. The Guyanese have lost all but two of their four matches; in the other two matches, one was abandoned without a ball being bowled against the Leeward Islands and then they secured a draw against Barbados over a week ago.
Guyana lost their opening match against three-time defending champions Jamaica after gaining first innings points and then dropped their other game to the Windward Islands. The abysmal performance of the team has them on 13 points and sixth on the points table.
The English cricketers on the other hand, have been able to pile on the runs throughout the tournament, securing the top two spots with scores of 553-6 declared, against Leeward Islands, and 538 against Barbados. Despite these scores though, the Englishmen have only won one game in the tournament, beating the Leewards by an innings and 120 runs in their opening game.
The side has as its batting coach former England middle order batsman Graham Thorpe and according to Newell this is a good opportunity for the players to draw from his experience. Apart from that, Newell, who has over 4000 First Class runs, said that most of the players had done some training with the senior team in Australia five weeks before Christmas last year while they were preparing for the Ashes Series.
“They were alongside the English team that won the Ashes so they had a lot of batting practice, batting experience and we said to them the importance of making big scores in these games other than 20s, 30s, 40s. We want to see people making hundreds if they want to play international cricket,” Newell emphasised.
In relation to his side’s bowling he maintained that with the plethora of flat, slow pitches in the Caribbean it would make it harder for his bowlers to take 20 wickets. He also pointed out that the ball has not been swinging therefore his bowlers “had to learn some new skills.
“We had to teach the bowlers about reverse swing, bowling certain spells of bounce to be aggressive with batsmen when we can be. But as you said the pitches don’t lend themselves to that so there has to be short spells and then change the bowling around,” the former part-time leg spinner stressed.
Meanwhile, commenting on the hot Guyana weather, Newell said that it will be a factor but the coaching team has already worked out ways to rotate its bowlers to ensure optimum results. He reminded that the side faced the same conditions in their last match in Trinidad & Tobago and his players worked hard to counter those condintions.
“The weather was very warm and the boys had to work very hard over the four days. But it makes a difference, probably influences the fact that we generally pick two spinners and we try and share the workload among our bowlers. We have been in the Caribbean for six weeks so hopefully we are getting used to it,” Newell commented.
