(CMC) – West Indies ODI captain Shai Hope has admitted that their batsmen need to find a way to overcome Sri Lanka’s wily spinners if they are to claw their way back into the series.
The regional side lost Sunday’s rain-affected, opening ODI by five wickets under the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method and will need to win the two remaining games if they are to emerge victorious in the series.
Similarly to the just concluded T20 series, Sri Lanka has relied heavily on its spinners to suppress the Windies’ batters.
In the first ODI their four spinners bowled 31 of the 38 possible overs in the West Indies’ innings, while accounting for all four wickets to fall and conceding only 139 runs at a stingy run rate of 4.50 runs an over.
Speaking ahead of today’s second ODI, Hope said the West Indies needed to devise a plan to unsettle Sri Lanka’s spinners.
“We know their main threat will be the spin, but obviously we have to look at the power play and we need to see how we can attack the power play.
“And then how are we going to attack their spinners, put them under pressure in some way. We have to play different shots or we have to look at different scoring areas, push a little harder to make them think,” Hope pointed out.
“If we allow them to just set and bowl then they are going to be all over us. So as a batting group we have to ensure that we put a lot more pressure on their bowlers so we can give ourselves the best chance to get big scores on the board.”
Hope said while it would not be an easy task to defeat Sri Lanka at home, the West Indies were up for the challenge.
He said the group was focused on improving all aspects of their game and climbing the ICC rankings.
“We know exactly what is in front of us. We have to play the next game like a final and we see where we’re at in terms of the rankings on the world stage and we have to find ways to get better and improve quickly,” Hope said.
“Having said that, we have to make sure we take each game at a time and seeing what happened in the previous game we have to look at the learnings we can find there, understand how we need to improve in terms of our bowling and batting.
“I think we have our work cut out. The conversations that we’ve had over the last 48 hours or so have been pretty good, and I think we’re in good head space to bounce back on Wednesday,” the skipper added.
