Time for young players to prove worth: WI skipper
Like Rohit Sharma, Carlos Brathwaite isn’t in charge of the 50-over team. But if Rohit spoke at length about getting players tested ahead of the 50-over World Cup next year, for Brathwaite the focus is on the WorldT20 in Australia in 2020. We want to use all the games between now and the T20 World Cup to get the team ready, he said. “Hopefully, I will be in charge.”
“We would like to use each and every series to get the right balance for all conditions and establish a brand of cricket we want to play by the time of the 2020 World Cup,” said Brathwaite.
Like India, who have rewarded performance in the IPL, Brathwaite, 30, said West Indies have players who did well in the last Caribbean Premier League (CPL) which was won by Trinbago Knight Riders in September.
“The message to them was: perform in the CPL and you will be selected. This too is to create a pool of players for the 2020 World Cup…There was a time when we were blessed with the Dwayne Bravos, Chris Gayles and Sunil Narines in their pomp and we would sometimes take T20 games for granted. If we fielded our best team, 90% of the time we would win, we felt. Those guys are now at the back-end of their careers and we are looking to the next generation. The tours of India and Bangladesh will be a challenge for these exciting young guys (7 of whom are first-timers) against some of the best in the world.” he said. Though Brathwaite said he felt T20 is a format the West Indies adapted to better than most when it started, which explained their supremacy, such is the weight of the India team that even without Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni, the world champions don’t start as favourites.
“Any team has a better chance without them (Dhoni and Kohli) but India has a lot of quality and we won’t be disrespecting them or taking them lightly…We are not accustomed to being underdogs but we are not ashamed of it. We are new, exciting team and I think we did a lot better than what people expected in the oneday series. Yes, India at home are formidable in any format, especially with the advent of IPL and the amount of T20 the Indian superstars play but we want to create an even bigger surprise in the T20s and come away with the trophy,” said Brathwaite.
Crucial to doing that would be how West Indies tackle the spinners. Brathwaite said while they respect Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal --- “they have spun a web around many teams not just the West Indies,” --West Indies have to find a way to maximize the overs they bowl.