West Indies ready for seven-over games

Colombo: The West Indies are ready to play seven-over cricket at the Twenty20 World Cup, captain Darren Sammy insists, after their Group B match against Ireland was abandoned due to rain on Monday. Rain has hit the tournament badly in the last few days and the South Africa-Sri Lanka match on Saturday was reduced to a seven-over affair.

But Sammy is adamant his side is fully prepared for a reduced-over contest.

He said: “The weather is something we have no control over and, as professionals, when these situations arise, we have got to make do and go out and do well for our team. We had that seven-over-a-side game between South Africa and Sri Lanka and it was interesting.”

He added: “You don’t want that to happen, but we have no control over the elements. Even if that happens, we have men like Chris Gayle and Kieron Pollard who love to hit and will enjoy such short-over games.”

Sammy said he was delighted that his team has made it to the Super Eight stage on a superior run rate without winning a match.

Trump card

The West Indies will now take on England on Thursday in their first match of the Super Eight contest. “England are the defending champions and we don’t want to underestimate anybody. We just go out there and bowl properly and execute our plans,” he said, adding that he is relying heavily on his trump card — spinner Sunil Narine.

“Narine has got a few tricks up his sleeve. He is a guy who believes that he can always do new stuff; he tries new run-ups, a new action, he just looks at improving all the time. The pitches here will offer more assistance to him as the tournament progresses and that’s a good thing going into the Super Eights,” he said.

In fact, Sammy was delighted with the performance of all his bowlers in the match against Ireland. “I will back my bowlers to come good. They haven’t had a full game and this match saw a much-improved performance when compared to the last game. Ravi Rampaul came back well in this game; maybe he struggled for confidence, but he came good for us and did well. Chris Gayle bowled for us for the first time in international cricket after a while and he came out good for us too. So, we have a lot of bowling options and I will back my bowlers to restrict other teams. That game against Australia, which we lost, was a one-off,” he said.

Sammy believes that Narine will play a vital role in his team’s success. “Narine loves it when batsmen look to attack him. I think the scoreboard pressure, especially in Twenty20 cricket, makes him a tricky customer to handle. I think Shane Watson played him well in the last game but, once he gets going, he will be a handful to put away,” he said.

In Monday’s match, Ireland made 129-6 in their 19 overs before heavy rain at the Premadasa stadium prevented the West Indies from starting their innings.

Superior net run-rate

Both teams gained one point each, but the West Indies joined Group B winners Australia in the next round due to a superior net run-rate over the Irish.

The West Indies will be placed alongside defending champions England, New Zealand and hosts Sri Lanka in group one of the Super Eights which starts on Thursday.

The other half has Australia, South Africa, India and either Pakistan or Bangladesh, with the top two teams from each group advancing to the semi-finals.

The match, watched by barely 1,000 fans, was reduced to 19 overs per side after an hour’s interruption midway through Ireland’s innings due to rain.

Chris Gayle was the star performer with the ball, bagging two wickets as the Ireland innings failed to gain any momentum after the West Indies won the toss and elected to field.

Niall O’Brien made 25 and Gary Wilson scored 21, before both batsmen fell to Gayle’s off-spin.

Irish captain William Porterfield was dismissed off the first ball of the match for the second time in a row, bowled by Fidel Edwards.

He had also fallen to Australian Shane Watson’s first delivery in Ireland’s previous match last week.

The West Indies, who had lost to Australia in a rain-affected match, endured another wet outing as rain lashed the ground during the innings break.