NEW DELHI, (Reuters) – A depleted West Indies look vulnerable in Monday’s match against the Netherlands, who will be hoping to create the first upset of the World Cup that they threatened to pull off against England on Tuesday.
The current batch under Darren Sammy is a pale shadow of the West Indies team that won the first two World Cups in 1975 and 1979 before a steady decline set in.
As if their string of poor results coming into the tournament was not bad enough, they lost opener Adrian Barath and stumper Carlton Baugh through injuries even before beginning their Group B campaign.
The bigger blow was dealt on Friday when talismanic all-rounder Dwayne Bravo was ruled out of the tournament because of a knee injury.
The team management are yet to make up their minds on a replacement and their upstart Dutch opponents, on a high after their superb display against England, sense another opportunity for mischief against a former cricketing super power.
England needed until the penultimate over to beat the Dutch with six wickets to spare.
“We still need to make a couple of improvements for the game in two days’ time. If we can manage to do that, we feel we will certainly cause some problems for the opposition,” the Netherlands coach Peter Drinnen told reporters at the Feroz Shah Kotla today.
West Indies continue to implode just when things start going right and Friday’s defeat by South Africa was a testimonial of their notorious inconsistency.
They have a match-winner in Chris Gayle and an explosive stroke-maker in Kieron Pollard but none of them have been consistent with the bat.
For a team that owe many of their trophies to their famed pace battery in the 1970s and 80s, the present West Indies attack has been struggling even against mediocre batting orders and the Netherlands would hope to cash in on this weakness.
The Dutch batsmen, especially all-rounder Ryan ten Doeschate, have already given a good account of themselves in the narrow defeat against England and are keen to follow it up with another impressive performance.
Their inexperience and limited bowling resource were evident against England but with a depleted West Indies squad in their sights, Peter Borren and his team mates have realistic chances of their first victory in the showpiece tournament.
