Under the leadership of Dwayne Bravo and the guidance of former West Indies players, West Indies team manager Sir Richie Richardson and coach Stuart Williams are keen to make amends from their previous India tour in 2013.
While addressing the media in Mumbai, Richardson said, “I believe we have the type of players that can go out there and perform and play well enough to beat anybody. We accept that we are not at the top of the rankings but if we guys go and play positive and confident cricket, I believe we have the ability to do very well in India.”
Having arrived a few days earlier, with two practice games scheduled ahead of the ODI series, the team feels they will be better prepared to take on the World Champions. “We have arrived at a good time and have a few days to practice and time to get acclimatized to the conditions.”
“We have just come off a successful series against Bangladesh. All of our players have been involved with cricket and some are still playing (in the Oppo Champions League T20) as we speak, so we feel we are in much better shape and better prepared to take on the Indians. We are just looking forward to a serious, good and a successful challenge,” he added explaining their preparedness ahead of the long tour.
Speaking about Dwayne Bravo’s leadership, Richardson observed, “I think in the short space of time that he has been the captain he has done reasonably well. He is a very intelligent cricketer. He has a lot of experience playing for the West Indies for a while now and has played all over the world. He knows the Indian players and I am sure he will do well as captain during the ODI matches.”
While various players of the team are in touch and the team is high on confidence coming into the series after comprehensively beating Bangladesh recently, WI will be without the services of Chris Gayle. However, they have Craig Braithwaite, Lendl Simmons besides Dwayne Smith to fill up the opening slots.
While appreciating young, Braithwaite, the coach said, “He shows a lot of character in terms of ability and he is going to be around for a very long time. He is very different from Gayle and I think they complement each other. You have Dwayne Smith and Lendl Simmons who played in CLT20 and are familiar with the conditions as well (and can open).”
When asked about their plans to negotiate Indian spinners – Pragyan Ojha and Ravichandran Ashwin who had posed problems to the visitors during their previous tour, Richardson said, “We have a lot of footage and the players would have watched these guys a lot. Besides that, a number of our players play in India and are familiar with these guys. We will strategies. At the end of the day it is down to confidence; how confident our batters are when they confront these spinners. We know what to expect and are looking forward to the challenge.”
Speaking about the opposition he further added, “We never single out one individual. It takes team effort to do well. We will look at everyone who is playing for India. We will look at all of them and discuss them because at this level anyone can come and do well and have a blinder of a series.”
When asked if having played the Bangladesh spinners would have helped their players, the WI Manager replied, “The batsmen having played against Asian spinners would certainly help but obviously one would say that the Indian spinners would be a formidable combination so we will have to work hard.”
Asked what kind of wickets they are expecting, the coach said, “The wickets are similar to the Caribbean. This is early season in India as well so maybe we will get one of the fresh wickets. We are just looking forward to the challenge whatever wicket we get to play on. We got to adapt and adjust quickly.”
