Government of Antigua & Barbuda
Press Release
ST. JOHN’S, Antigua (GIS) — West Indies Head Coach Ottis Gibson is expecting good things from his team when they face England in the upcoming three-match One-Day International Series at the Sir Vivian Richards Cricket Ground.
The Windies arrived on island Monday afternoon and had a full training session on Tuesday morning at the match venue. Following the session, Gibson outlined the team’s plans for the upcoming matches.
“We’re building toward the ICC T20 World Cup in Bangladesh and that’s important for us, but this series is also very important for us,” Gibson told reporters.
“We will play this series as One-Day Internationals, because that is what they are, and we will play hard and tough cricket and look to beat England. We haven’t played great One-Day cricket over the last six to eight months so we have to try and treat these games as they are try and win them for sure.”
He added: “We’re at home so hopefully we will benefit from home advantage. We went to New Zealand recently with a depleted side and we managed to level that series and we came away thinking that we could have won it. Hopefully we can come out and entertain our fans and give them something to smile about because we have not given them much to smile about recently in this format.”
During the recent tour of New Zealand the Windies ended 2-2 – winning the final match to level the series. In the final match West Indies made a record 363-4 to win by 202 runs. One match was washed out.
The upcoming series against England starts on Friday, with the second match carded for Sunday and the third match next Wednesday.
Following the ODIs, the two teams will play a three-match T20 Series in Barbados as part of preparations for the ICC World T20 Tournament to be played in Bangladesh.
SQUAD
Dwayne Bravo (captain)
Darren Bravo
Kirk Edwards
Jason Holder
Nikita Miller
Sunil Narine
Kieran Powell
Denesh Ramdin
Ravi Rampaul
Marlon Samuels
Darren Sammy
Lendl Simmons
Dwayne Smith