Pollard impressed with young trio

Judging from the last three T20I series in the Caribbean, West Indies captain Kieron Pollard revealed he is impressed by three of his young teammates.

In those three home series, West Indies surrendered to South Africa 3-2 while bouncing back to beat Australia 4-0, and in the final series against Pakistan, the abandonment of three matches saw West Indies losing 1-0. Nevertheless, the likes of Fabian Allen, Obed McCoy and Hayden Walsh Jr, stood out in Pollard’s eyes. The skipper made this revelation on Tuesday following the end of the Pakistan series.

According to Pollard, “I thought Fabien Allen is a find for us as well and we need to find a way to work with him and keep him on the park going forward.”

Allen was unable to play in the Pakistan series due to injury but against South Africa, he scored 34, 14 not out, and 19 not out, while against Australia, he made 29, and one and eight not out, in his three innings. The left arm spinner has also been economical with the ball and exuberant in the field, contending for the best fielder in the side with Walsh Jr.

Walsh Jr, marked his return with a Man of the Series award against Australia after taking 12 wickets in five matches with his leg spin.

Walsh had tested positive for Covid-19 on West Indies’ tour of Bangladesh at the start of the year, and though he was able to return to action in February in the domestic one-day Super50 tournament, he struggled in taking seven wickets at 37.42.

Like Walsh, McCoy returned to the side and made an impact immediately with his left-arm seam. The fast bowler was destructive against South Africa where he bagged nine wickets in five innings and followed up with five wickets in two innings against Australia.

“I thought these two guys [Walsh and McCoy] were fantastic, Hayden is a work in progress since 2019 getting the opportunity, he got dropped but he came back and worked tremendously hard and that is a true testament of hard work, the way he came out and started to play in the T20I series against Australia, Obed McCoy started in Sri Lanka had a couple of injuries before that but he worked on it and came back,” Pollard said.

Pollard reckoned that from the 14 scheduled T20I matches recently, the team has found what it was looking for, despite losing some players due to injury but was he watchful of the Caribbean Premier League [CPL] to see what players produce.

“Obviously the nature of how compact the games were, guys weren’t able to get through it even myself missing the entire series against Australia but having said that we know exactly what we want to do as a team and how we want to go forward and what is needed. Having the opportunity to have these 18 guys here I thought we saw what we needed and hopefully let’s see what happens in the CPL as it comes around the corner,” he noted.