Following their near week long preparatory camp, Amazon Warriors Head Coach Carl Hooper yesterday said that he was satisfied with the team’s progress thus far but admitted that more work will be done in order to get the players fully prepared ahead of Saturday’s opening match in this year’s (CPL) Caribbean Premier League T20 tournament.
After the second scheduled practice match held at the Guyana National Stadium was rained out, the players engaged in a few sessions of football while others ran laps. Speaking with Hooper after his meeting with the team, the former Guyana player told this newspaper that he is confident that while more work is needed, the Warriors have covered most of the areas.
“It is what it is, we had roughly six or seven days of the training camp the rain interfered a lot but the important thing was to get a hit out on Monday. While it wasn’t the desired result it gave a few players like Brad Hodge the opportunity to play on this ground for the first time but I’m fairly confident that we did well,” the former West Indies all rounder declared.
The Warriors were beaten by a Guyana Rest XI in Monday’s first 20/20 practice match but the two-time finalists had some of their big players in Shiv Chanderpaul, Brad Hodge, Sunil Narine, Ronsford Beaton, Paul Wintz and Assad Fudadin, exhibiting the kind of form needed by the team.
The Coach admitted that despite a few good performances he was still circumspect about the batting.
“I suppose there’s one area that continues to raise its head and that is we didn’t rotate the ball enough. We had a lot of dot balls. I think seven and a half overs worth of dot balls and in 20/20 that is a lot. “It’s something that I spoke to the lads about. I will continue to drive them to get better but that was totally unacceptable but they are professionals and they need to show a lot of intent”. He said.
Nevertheless he lauded his bowlers, especially Beaton who he said showed the hostility and venom he asked of his quick men. “I think I failed to mention that Beaton and Wintz were put on the other side (the Rest XI) for that reason.
We try to work on them being proactive and engage their captain in discussions. We don’t want them to bowl three good balls and get hit then react.
“It was good to see Beaton with his variations, Wintz didn’t bowl well in his first spell but when he came back he bowled well and removed Anthony Bramble with a good yorker. I think you have to know what you want to do and back yourself, but I still think we have stuff to work on”.
With some of their teammates in Skipper Denesh Ramdin, Devendra Bishoo, Veerasammy Permaul along with the Sri Lankan duo of Tilakratne Dilshan and Thishara Perera due to meet up with them in Barbados, the former West Indies skipper is confident that his team will indeed come together and gel as a unit ahead of Saturday’s match.
He also confirmed that Hodge will be the vice-captain to Ramdin while hinting a possible inclusion of both seamers, Beaton and Wintz who will share the new ball sometime during the competition. The Warriors wing out today at 13:00hrs for Barbados where they will have two days of final training prior to Saturday’s opening game against defending Champions Barbados Pride.
