West Indies looking for consistency
West Indies captain Kieron Pollard said do not look for any major changes to the team as they look to build consistency.
Pollard was speaking in the match preview ahead of today’s game against Sri Lanka and despite a shaky performance in the middle order where a hat trick was taken, Pollard believes that the constant chopping and changing when things do not go right in one or two games is something that has plagued the West Indies over the years.
“You don’t expect miracles from people and sometimes you have to give them chances and opportunities to fulfil what you are trying to achieve and after a period of time then you can make a judgement call.
“After one game I don’t think we are thinking about many changes or anything like that and we need to get away from the fact that if a guy doesn’t perform, not exclusively using Chris but any individual, after one game or two games that he is just not good enough and try to discard them.”
The game started well for the West Indies with the new bowling attack.
“I thought they were fantastic even though it was a new bowling line-up. I don’t think we had any bowlers from the last series there and they used their skill and they used the wicket and they used their brains and they were able to shut out Sri Lanka for 130-odd,” said Pollard.
However, he is always looking for improvements. “It can only be positives from there. We will still look for areas to improve and it is a matter of just trying to execute as well.”
With the goal still to formulate a team for the World Cup as well as win the series, Pollard is eager to see how far the bowling line-up can take them even as they try different things.
However, the bizarre game was termed “a great advertisement for cricket”, as the West Indies wobbled in their run chase, which led to an entertaining game that had everyone on the edge of their seats.
“You want wickets, you want sixes. It was topsy-turvy, but that’s how you want cricket matches to go, you don’t [want] one side totally dominating the other. But when it comes to being West Indian and West Indies cricket, this has been synonymous with us, so hopefully we can change it.”
The goal is not to lose batsmen in clusters as the West Indies got off to a solid start thanks to opener Lendl Simmons and Evin Lewis.
The challenge now will be to negate the Sri Lanka spin attack, which has already posed challenges and has already been the topic of conver-sation among the West Indian plans.
Pollard said that with the short turnaround there isn’t much physical practice they can do, but it is “a mental picture as to how we want to go about it, the sort of shots we want to play against the spinners and the matchups in terms of our batsmen”.
“We have experienced guys here who have been around for a long time and we have the younger ones as well who have learnt and [are] continuing to learn and will want to impress.
“Hopefully our batting line-up can come together and it wouldn’t be that heart-wrenching chasing small totals.” (CG)