With just 16 games to go until the International Cricket Council (ICC) World Cup, West Indies begin their preparation with three One Day Internationals (ODI) against Bangladesh and are aiming to start with a series win. This is according to team coach, Stuart Law, who held a press conference after the team went through their paces at the Providence Stadium where the first two matches will be played. “Sixteen matches before the World Cup starts so we really need to make sure we start putting together a nice core group of players and play good, positive, smart cricket and when we do that, we are a whole team, we got to put it together in the series to make sure we are able to win,” Law said.
Looking at the squad, Law noted the excitement of the two young prospects in Keemo Paul and Shimron Hetmyer saying “they are good young kids, Keemo has recently come into the side, he’s done everything he possibly can and still learning, he has great energy, can bat and bowl. Hety [Hetmyer] has been around the team a while he just needs to understand to score runs consistently at this level once he does that he will be a fixture for a long time, he’s exciting, plays well and its grabbing hold of opportunities.”
This, Law related, is not West Indies dropping players but a chance for everyone to showcase their skills when asked if the dropping of Kesrick Williams and the injury of Marlon Samuels was a big blow.
Despite the absence of those two, Law is of the opinion that there is a lot of firepower in the bowling department, stating “they bowled beautifully [in the tests] and the guys that come in, the young guys like Alzarri Joseph and Jason [Mohammed] is great to have them back and I look forward to seeing them play and obviously guys like Keemo Paul and Andre Russell is back so we’ve got some firepower there and Jason Holder is in good nick with the ball so we just need our batters to provide the stability and platform required.”
With only a handful of the squad here Law said that… “we become a team tomorrow with the three that played with the Vice chancellor’s XI coming in from Jamaica so they arrive later today [last night] so yeah we look forward to being a group and what the series hold.”
While going through a rigorous six weeks, the players have gotten the luxury of a few extra days off having finished the test match inside three days.
Law pointed out that the players were playing really good cricket but …”let ourselves down in some areas but we will start putting it all together and start the process for the World Cup now.”
Looking at the opposition, Law was wary of the fact that Bangladesh were no walkovers but said that the West Indies need to keep on top of the opposition in an effort to win the series. “We know Bangladesh are a very good one day cricket team if we don’t come out and give them their due respect and cover them they can hurt us and our boys understand if we open the door they can jump through so the plan is not to let them through and keep the foot on the throat. We’ve got good firepower and athletes we are explosive and we want to put that all together every day we play and if we do that we will be pretty tough to beat.” Law said
