Windies must win today to keep series alive

Apr 28, 2011 Sports

Darren Bravo

As Butts’ selection panel stick to their guns

By Sean Devers in Barbados
in association with Digicel

Despite half-centuries from Darren Bravo and Lendl Simmons and two impressive spells from Rookie Guyanese leg-spinner Davendra Bishoo, West Indies slumped to successive defeats in St Lucia in the two opening games of the Digicel ODI series against Pakistan.
Chris Gayle has made himself unavailable for the Pakistan series to fulfill IPL duties after not being picked for the first two ODIs and pacer Jerome Taylor is fit enough for his IPL franchise but not the Clyde Butts led West Indies selectors.
Kieron Pollard is also in India for the IPL with the WICB’s blessings, yet Butts and his counterparts have stuck to their guns in their continued omission of senior batsmen Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shiv Chanderpaul even as the regional side, which have lost their last five ODIs including in the World Cup quarter-finals to Pakistan, failed to reach 225 in either of the matches in St Lucia.
West Indies begin the third ODI today at the Kensington Oval needing a win to keep the 5-match series alive and with the selectors amazingly naming an unchanged squad for today’s

Lendl Simmons

match-up, Pakistan are the overwhelming favorites to win the series even before a ball is bowled in the final game in Guyana.
That this is not Pakistan’s strongest side makes the results from the Daren Sammy led home side even more embarrassing.
Abdul Razzaq and Kamran Akmal have been axed from Pakistan’s ODI squad while senior players Umar Gul and Younis Khan have been rested as the Shahid Afridi led team features a new wicketkeeper in Mohammad Salman.
Roach is a quality pacer but with Sammy’s innocuous medium pace being used to share the new ball with him, too much pressure is being put on the 22-year-old Bajan and Bishoo has taken all of the wickets to fall to bowlers in the first two matches.
Dwayne Bravo was inconsistent with the ball and although Antiguan leg-spinner Anthony Martin bowled well on debut, Pakistan only lost two wickets in the first game and three in the second chasing 220 victory targets.
Ahmed Shehzad scored 102 while Misbah-ul-Haq, Asad Shafiq and Mohammad Hafeez notched up half-centuries in St Lucia for Pakistan who won 3-nill the last time they played an ODI series against the West Indies in the Caribbean in 2005.
If the bowling lacks potency, the batting, without Gayle, Sarwan and Chanderpaul, is even worse. Devon Smith, who looks at sea against quality off-spin, has been retained despite scoring just 33 runs from the two matches in St Lucia.

Devendra Bishoo

This team lacks experience and if Chanderpaul is considered ‘slow’ his most success in ODIs have come as an opener and he should have replaced Smith as Simmons’s partner for today’s must-win game.
For Butts to suggest that Kirk Edwards is a better middle order option than a 30-year-old Sarwan is an insult to the intelligence of the cricket fans in the region while the absence of a senior batsman is putting too much pressure on the gifted but inexperienced Daren Bravo, especially since Marlon Samules who enjoyed a great ‘come-back’ First-Class season this year, seems stuck in an ultra defensive mode.
Bravo and Simmons are the only West Indians with more than 50 runs from the first two games and with Sammy unable to stamp his authority with either bat or ball, a vastly improved performance is needed today by the West Indies in only their second ODI match (and first since 2000) against Pakistan in Barbados. Today is a national holiday here to mark Heroes Day and Sammy, whose career could be over after the India series if he continues to fail, needs to be a hero on an Island where Sir Gary Sobers is the only one of the 10 National Heroes still alive.
Sobers is expected at the game and it is hoped that his presence can inspire the host to justify to the public that this team was picked on ability and not politics, a view shared by many in the cricket fraternity.
Pacers Wahab Riaz and Junaid Khan along with spinners Hafeez (who has opened the bowling with his off-spin), Saeed Ajmal and Skipper Afridi could again trouble the batsmen on a track which should be faster and better for batting than the ones in St Lucia.
Rain is forecast for today and a washout will ensure Pakistan cannot lose the series.
But at the rate this struggling West Indies team is going, it could at least prevent a whitewash in their own backyard from a team which they beat at Albion in 1977 in the first ever ODI game ever played in the West Indies.