Former West Indies seamer, Ian Bradshaw, believes the West Indies will enter their series against New Zealand as the underdogs but said that he is happy to see Darren Bravo and Shimron Hetmyer returning to boost the batting.
The eighth-ranked Maroon boys will battle second-placed New Zealand in two Tests.
The two sides will also clash in three T20Is.
“We go to New Zealand very much as the underdogs…it’s been well said before on this programme how disciplined New Zealand are but as we saw in England we have the potential to win cricket matches,” Bradshaw stated on the Mason and Guest radio programme.
The 46-year-old former left-arm quick compared the current side to those of West Indies’ golden era and noted that it was inconsistency that was the difference.
“The challenge with us is that we don’t put together consistently good cricket to win a series and what was great about Sir Clive’s [Lloyd] teams and those of Sir Vivian [Richards] and so forth, those guys were able to consistently come out on the park and dominate,” Bradshaw declared.
He warned, “Until we could start to approach each session with that mindset and intensity, our performances will unfortunately be inconsistent.”
Bradshaw suggested that the Caribbean side has the talent to win matches but must go there with the mindset to dominate and get on top of New Zealand.
“In both formats we will be challenged but I strongly believe we can win a test match based on our talents, I’ve said so up front. What we have to do is be a lot braver, we cannot go to New Zealand and play timid cricket with them, they are a patient team, they will grind you down, we must go to New Zealand prepared to take the game to them and to dominate them,” he suggested.
The 2004 Champions Trophy Man-of-the-Final added: “It is our guys will approach this series with a clear mindset than they did last time where we were obviously intimidated by the talents of the New Zealand team.”
Bradshaw also expressed his delight with the return of the two batsmen to prop up the batting order.
“I am pleased we’ve gotten back Darren Bravo and Hetmyer into our squads. Let’s not fool ourselves, they are two of our better batsmen in the Caribbean and it’s always good to see when our outfit could carry what looks like the strongest batting line up we could possibly have,” he declared.