Ahead of their T20 World Cup opener against Papua New Guinea, West Indies captain Rovman Powell is pleased to have three quality spinners in their squad and hopes to entertain the home fans with “good cricket”.
The co-hosts have named three spinners – Gudakesh Motie, Akeal Hosein and Roston Chase – in their squad for the home tournament given the slow and low nature of the surfaces in the Caribbean.
“I think I am very, very pleased at this moment to see that we have three quality spinners. Not often, our West Indies team has been selected with three quality spinners. So that is something that I’m very, very excited about,” ICC quoted Powell as saying.
“Times may come when they may not play. But to have them at our disposal is very, very important for us,” he added.
West Indies and defending champions England are the only teams in the tournament to lift the trophy twice. Powell admitted the challenge of playing at home but kept faith in their brand of cricket to entertain the home spectators.
“I think it’s a mixture of both (challenge and expectation),” Powell said. “It’s definitely a challenge. When you’re playing in front of your home crowd, it can be good and it can be bad.
“But we’re trying to look on the positive side of things and see that the fans will come out just anticipating, hoping that we’ll play good cricket to entertain them,” he added.
Talking about their recent elevation to the fourth spot in the ICC Men’s T20I Rankings, Powell credited that to their hard work in the last 12 months where they registered wins against cricket powerhouses India, Australia and England and most recently 3-0 whitewash against South Africa at home.
“And I think over the duration of the last 12 months or so, we have played some very good cricket right across the world. And such, that has improved our T20 rankings to being fourth in the world.
“It’s a team that has confidence. It’s a team that understands and knows how to play T20 cricket. So hopefully, during the duration of this World Cup, we can show that,” Powell said.
On the other hand, PNG skipper Assad Valla was looking forward to playing against full member nations, whom he described as “one of the powers in cricket”.
Valla’s side featured in the 2021 T20 World Cup as well but the skipper believed that PNG had a more settled squad this time around.
“I think there’s more experience in the team. The preparation has been different to the last one we went to, as it was held during the COVID. So, we didn’t play any international cricket over 12 to 18 months and just going to the World Cup. But there’s no excuses as the other teams went through the same phase as well.
“So, for us I think the experience we gained from that [tournament], having a different coaching staff. and I think having a more settled team than the one we had last time, so I’m really happy [with] the squad we have assembled for this tournament,” Valla said.
Both West Indies and PNG are in Group C along with New Zealand, Afghanistan and Uganda.
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