KANDY, Sri Lanka, (Reuters) – West Indies are relying on Trinidad mystery spinner Sunil Narine to make a big impact on the England batting when the two teams meet in their opening super eight match at the Twenty20 World Cup in Pallekele tomorrow.
“Sunil is our trump card, he’s done well for us in that format, hopefully he could have a big impact on the English batting lineup,” West Indies captain Darren Sammy told reporters today.
“In Sri Lankan conditions if he’s got assistance he will be a handful.”
Narine was a success in the Indian Premier League (IPL) this year but took only one England wicket on West Indies’ subsequent tour.
However his variations are more suited to Asian conditions where England are traditionally fallible against spin as they showed when they collapsed to 80 all out in their group match against India with Harbhajan Singh and Piyush Chawla taking six wickets between them.
Sammy said all his team would have a big part to play in restricting England to a reasonable total.
“We got to have the consistency, so far the games played here have big scores, so restricting them to a certain total is massive for us,” he said.
Sammy said his explosive opener Chris Gayle was also a key player.
“Since he’s been back he’s been excellent for us, we just hope he will continue and the fans love watching him play,” said Sammy.
“It’s going to be a very interesting game tomorrow, and hopefully everybody will be pleased if West Indies comes out victorious.”
England captain Stuart Broad said the Pallekele ground was similar to those in the Caribbean where they won the last World Twenty20 Cup.
“It brings back some good memories,” said Broad. “It’s important that we adapt to the conditions here and I’m very excited about that.
“Obviously you are five games away from winning a World Cup, but it’s important we don’t look it like that, we break it down to small bits starting with the West Indies tomorrow.
“We’ve played against the West Indies this summer, we know they are a dangerous side, they had success in the Twenty20 format and they’ve got players who have done well in the IPL.”
