Colombo, Sri Lanka – West Indies captain Darren Sammy shares the view that spin bowling will play a major role in the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup. Speaking after the Windies second warm-up match against Sri Lanka, Sammy backed his slow bowlers to perform on the big stage.
Darren Sammy banking on his spinners. Photo by Shiek Mohamed
“Spin will be effective during the tournament. It is quite clear. If you had a close look at the warm-up matches you would see the ball was turning and the slow bowlers all did a good job. We have two specialist spinners in Sulieman Benn and Nikita Miller and they are bowling really well at the moment for us, so we expect them to play major part,” Sammy said.
“Benn bowled well against the Sri Lankans and is an asset. He has been taking wickets and that is always a good sign for your spinner. Miller was outstanding when he got the opportunity against the Kenyans. He is also one of our better fielders and offers a lot to the team. Chris Gayle has done a good job in all forms of the games for us as well and we can call on him to deliver with his off-breaks in this tournament as well.”
The Windies made 253 and their opening warm-up match against Kenya, while they made 281 and lost the second against Sri Lanka. In the first match Ramnaresh Sarwan made a superb century, while in the second match Chris Gayle hit a boundary-studded 58 off 38 balls.
“We batted well and we brought it down to a pretty close game [against Sri Lanka]. Obviously we would love to have won the match, but we are still focused on the job at hand. All the warm-ups are over and it is now down to the business of challenging the other teams and looking to win the World Cup,” Sammy added.
“For us the warm-up matches were very useful. Before the warm-ups we had some matches against Sri Lanka and that will all help us to come up with the best combinations when we move over to India for the main event.”
The West Indies team will travel from Colombo to Delhi on Thursday. The opening match will be against South Africa at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium on Thursday, February 24. They then face The Netherlands (February 28, Delhi), Bangladesh (March 4, Dhaka), Ireland (March 11, Mohali), England (March 17, Chennai), and India (March 20, Chennai).