WI chase do-or-die win to keep WCup hopes alive

HARARE, Zimbabwe (CMC):

Bowling coach James Franklin said yesterday that beleaguered West Indies would continue clinging to the glimmer of hope that was their World Cup dreams, as they prepared for their critical do-or-die clash with Scotland today.

The Caribbean side lost the last two of their four group games of the ICC World Cup qualifiers to Zimbabwe and the Netherlands, to leave themselves having to win all three of their Super Six games in order to stand any chance of reaching the showpiece in India this year.

Due to the defeats, West Indies took no points into the Super Six stage and opening wins for Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe – who both took four points into the round – put the two-time World champions even closer to elimination.

“There is still opportunity. We’re not out of this qualifying tournament,” the New Zealander said.

“Yes, we’ve made it pretty tricky for ourselves where we have to rely on other results to go our way, as well as controlling our own destiny in terms of winning the games that are in front of us.

“We reflected as a group after that loss to the Netherlands. We had a couple days off where we just had space and then we could come together and put our heads together on what we wanted to achieve as a collective moving forward, and that starts with tomorrow’s game.

SUPPORT EACH OTHER

“It’s upon every individual, it’s upon us as a group to make sure that we carry – not just ourselves – but we carry each other, we support each other. And we’re confident we will show you that throughout the next period of time over these next games through this week.”

West Indies opened the group stage with wins over United States and Nepal, but things quickly fell apart when they failed to chase down 268 against Zimbabwe and then shockingly failed to defend 374 against the Dutch.

But while there is huge importance surrounding today’s result, West Indies have won all three of their previous meetings with the Scots, a statistic which will be a boost to their flagging confidence.

Franklin said, however, they would be taking nothing for granted, in any of the games in the Super Stage stage.

“We absolutely respect whoever we’re coming up against and we know we have to play our best cricket to put ourselves in the best position to win games, so that first opportunity starts tomorrow,” Franklin explained.

“We’ve probably been a little bit off in all aspects but what you can do is only move forward and try and remedy those little discrepancies – for a want of a better term – and that’s what we do on the training ground and that’s what we do when we converse with one another.

“You can change back time and you hope that every experience you have is a learning experience. We’ve had some meetings, we’ve now been able to put that into practice on the training ground and now moving forward, we can hopefully demonstrate that on the playing field against Scotland, Oman and Sri Lanka.”

SQUADS:

SCOTLAND – Richie Berrington (captain), Matthew Cross, Alasdair Evans, Chris Greaves, Jack Jarvis, Michael Leask, Tom Mackintosh, Chris McBride, Brandon McMullen, George Munsey, Adrian Neill, Safyaan Sharif, Chris Sole, Hamza Tahir, Mark Watt

WEST INDIES – Shai Hope (captain), Rovman Powell, Shamarh Brooks, Yannic Cariah, Keacy Carty, Roston Chase, Jason Holder, Akeal Hosein, Alzarri Joseph, Brandon King, Kyle Mayers, Gudakesh Motie, Keemo Paul, Nicholas Pooran, Romario Shepherd