King
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC):
THE NEW-LOOK West Indies team will be intent on being 'relentless' when they face South Africa in the opening Test of the Digicel series today.
Bennett King, the West Indies head coach, said this week that this would be the team's focus both in its approach to its batting and bowling. Further, he said the camp held at the Three Ws Oval of the UWI Cave Hill had been geared towards getting this new attitude across to the players.
"We are preparing ourselves for hard, tough battles all the way through and that's what we have been looking for during our training here," King said.
RELENTLESS IN APPROACH
"And that is being relentless in our approach in terms of if we get in, making sure we get a big score and making sure when we are bowling, we are very disciplined, especially in Guyana where the wicket is not conducive to getting 20 wickets," he said.
"It's quite a hard task and that's what we have been working towards."
King, presiding over his first home series as coach of the West Indies team, said they had also tried to prepare for the fact that the South Africans also played bold, positive cricket.
"The South Africans play a hard tough grinding style of cricket and obviously they've got good depth in their batting and their bowling," King explained.
"They play a style that's reasonably aggressive, and they keep coming at you."
The West Indies 13-man squad left Barbados on Tuesday evening for Guyana where it will engage South Africa in the first of a four-Test series at Bourda.
King said the players would only have a light training session yesterday in preparation for today's Test, with the bowlers sending down a maximum of three overs at full pace and the batsmen getting a healthy knock.
