The West Indies are two-time World T20 champions but are currently not in the best of forms. However, they will be hoping to bring their A-game when they open their campaign against favourites England in a Super 12 match of the ICC men’s T20 World Cup on Saturday.
The West Indies, a team that has some of the most talented T20 players, performed meekly in their two warm-up games against Pakistan and Afghanistan. If they want to make a dent in the tournament, they would need to look past it.
It was the dismal batting outing that cost them both the practice matches. While against Pakistan, they failed to put up a fighting total, putting up 130/7, the team that is being led by Kieron Pollard‘s men managed only 133/5 in their chase of 189 against Afghanistan.
Roston Chase’s 54 off 58 balls against Afghanistan was the only saving grace of their batting performance as none of the other batters failed to capitalise.
Pollard showed some spark when he hit a 10-ball 23 with five boundaries against Pakistan and he would be hoping to keep doing it for his team in the tournament.
The team from the Caribbean will need its batters Evin Lewis, Lendl Simmons, Shimron Hetmyer and Nicholas Pooran to fire so that they could win three group matches and qualify for the semis.
Even though the brute force of Chris Gayle is the stuff of legends in the shortest format of the game, his poor form may be one of the concerns that the management has to address. He has scored just 165 runs in 9 innings in the Caribbean Premier League and featured in just two games for Punjab Kings in the UAE leg of the IPL.
England, on the other hand, are the current World champions in ODI cricket and will be itching to put the ghosts of the 2016 edition to rest when Carlos Brathwaite had smashed four successive sixes in the final to end their dreams.
Eoin Morgan‘s men will look to set the record straight when his team takes the field on Saturday.
England seems a balanced side despite missing some key players in Ben Stokes, Jofra Archer and Sam Curran.
Their batting boasts of some big names such as Jason Roy, Jos Buttler, and Jonny Bairstow — all capable of destroying any bowling attack on their day.
While England lost to India in the first warm-up, they quickly recovered to beat New Zealand in the second match.
Teams (from):
West Indies: Kieron Pollard, Nicholas Pooran, Fabian Allen, Dwayne Bravo, Roston Chase, Andre Fletcher, Chris Gayle, Shimron Hetmyer, Evin Lewis, Obed McCoy, Lendl Simmons, Ravi Rampaul, Andre Russell, Oshane Thomas, Hayden Walsh Jr.
England: Eoin Morgan, Moeen Ali, Jonathan Bairstow, Sam Billings, Jos Buttler, Tom Curran, Chris Jordan, Liam Livingstone, Dawid Malan, Tymal Mills, Adil Rashid, Jason Roy, David Willey, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood.
The match starts at 7.30pm IST.
