Series wide open!
—says Pollard ahead of 3rd T20I
West Indies captain, Kieran Pollard reckons the five-match series is wide open as they prepare to take on South Africa in the third T20I at 14.00 hours today. The hosts West Indies, drew first blood in the opening contest but lost by just 16 runs in the second match as the South Africans levelled the series.
“You assess the scenarios, you see the batters, you see what they are capable off on both sides so I think there is a lot of planning going on but it boils down to how the XI guys taking the field execute on both sides to see who is mentally stronger and able to do the basic things on a consistent sort of level,” said Pollard.
“Both teams have seen each other and the series is wide open,” he added.
The all-rounder contends that the ultimate goal is to win and while there are talks about who should be included and who shouldn’t in the cricket circle, the objective is to put out the best side every time.
“We’ll see how it goes. Again, the ultimate goal for us is winning. As I said, we will take it as we go along. We’ve had discussions both the selection panel and everyone so we will take it as we see fit and, at this point, we are thinking of winning and putting out the best team that we think can go out on the park and get the results for us at any given time… so 1-1, let’s see what happens.”
With an eye on the World Cup and West Indies naming an 18man squad for this series and the upcoming ones against Pakistan and Australia, so far, a lot of positives have been seen from the two matches.
“There are a lot of positives. When you look at it from a player’s perspective, you look at [Kevin] Sinclair bouncing back after that first game, first couple overs, look a [Obed] McCoy being consistent in the last couple games, you look at our ability to maximize our strengths which is sort of six hitting and powering deliveries,” he said.
Pollard added, “From a fielding perspective, we have been fantastic as a team, despite the average age of our team that has been spoken about so there are a lot of different positives to take from the two games and for me, it’s just a situation of a three-four over gap yesterday that we actually faulted as a team and that has been identified because we deal with the problem straight away, we come up with solutions and hopefully we can come out and execute that going forward.”
The 34-year-old was wary of the South African danger men in Quinton de Kock, Reeza Hendricks and David Miller, to name a few but was cognizant that the team has addressed the problems from their loss and dealt with them.