Hyderabad: The West Indies could be the underdogs going into the T20 series with India but captain Kieron Pollard says his young side are up for the challenge.
“We play a lot of cricket in India. It’s just a mater of using our experience and hopefully that experience can be a good step for us. At the end of the day we are here to play some good cricket. We have prepared well and from tomorrow we will hit the ground and start running,” he said on Thursday.
“It’s about putting the pieces of puzzle together. There are instances we knew we faltered in the last series (against Afghanistan, in India). We have spoken about it and hopefully in this series we put these things right,” he added.
Personally, he just wants to continue his form. “Every time I step on the cricket field, as a professional, I want to have personal pride. You have good times and bad times, things have been going pretty decent for me and I just want to continue doing that and continue scoring runs for the team. I hope my contribution put the team in a winning position,” he said.
The seasoned player also backed youngsters in his side. “They (Brandon King, Khary Pierre, Hayden Walsh and Keserick Williams) have been pretty good. It’s good that we have young guys coming in from the CPL (Caribbean Premier League). They are excited to represent West Indies. But the problem is, we as individuals try to judge people too quickly. We need to have patience. At the end of the day we need results but sometimes you have to be honest with yourself. We look forward to these talents showing the world what they can do. Sometime you need to have umbrella over them and protect them from the vultures out there to pull them down. It’s just a matter of trying to teach them and ease them into the world of international cricket which we know is a very tough place,” he said.
The West Indies are without big names such as Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, Dwayne Bravo and Carlos Brathwaite.
“You do not want to have players trying to fill in the gaps of senior players. For us, Russell, Narine and Bravo are big gaps, but as a team, we have selected 15 players to do a job here and we back each and every one of them,” Pollard said.
India vs West Indies1st T20I on STAR Sports 1, HD @ 7pm
