West Indies head coach, Phil Simmons is anticipating a spin-heavy attack from Sri Lanka in the upcoming two-Test series while revealing that strike rotation will be one of the areas the team will be working on to come out with a win.
Simmons made these disclosures yesterday during a virtual conference following the team’s first training session in Colombo.
According to Simmons, “I think it would be a heavy dose of spin coming from them because we saw when they played England, they opened the bowling with a spinner so we are going to be focusing a lot on how we combat that with the new ball and then bat as normal after that.”
Nevertheless, the head coach noted that his side held their own fairly well in similar conditions and the way things started, it seems to be heading in a similar direction.
“We’ve played spin alright in Bangladesh, we did what we had to do to score the runs we needed and win the game so we need to sort of bring that mentality that we had on that away tour and the preparation today started like that,” he said.
Simmons said that strike rotation and time at the crease are areas which the team will need to work on since they would be coming up against “quality spinners” and therefore “it is something we are going to be discussing and putting into practice.”
The batting department will also have eyes glued on them with the inclusion of seasoned campaigner, Shai Hope and rookie, Jeremy Solozano who is on track to open the batting with Captain Kraigg Brathwaite.
On Solozano, the head coach said he is a compact young player and expressed, “He looked the best in the recently concluded Best versus best matches and he has gotten his chance and we keep our fingers crossed that he is the piece of the puzzle we are looking for because we tried a lot of players at the top and it’s time we find someone permanent for the captain’s partner.”
Meanwhile, on Hope, Simmons said, “Shai has been looking good, he played well in the two Best versus best games and today in the first practice he looked good. We are working with him to see if we could get him back where he was in England, not just form-wise, physically, mentally, everything… because we know how valuable a player he will be.” The first Test begins on November 21.
