DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, CMC- West Indies will attempt to avoid a second successive whitewash when they face Pakistan in the third and final match of their One-Day International series here today.
West Indies are already two-nil down in the series and will be pinning their hopes on a consolation win to elevate waning morale ahead of the Test series against Pakistan.
The regional side has been outplayed by Pakistan in all five limited overs encounters thus far including their three-match T20 sweep against the reigning world champions.
“We don’t want to lose three-nil we want to go into the Test match with a little bit of confidence. We just have to play better than Pakistan. simple as that,” said coach Roddy Estwick.
“We just have to outplay them all round. They have outplayed us so far in the two series .We have got to up our game .But we just got to be better as a team, as a unit”.
West Indies have lost most of their matches against Pakistan on this tour in lopsided fashion including the three T20 matches where they crashed to nine-wicket, 16-run and eight-wicket defeats.
However, despite losing the second ODI, their performance reflected an improvement with Darren Bravo and Marlon Samuels recording fifties.
“We are happy that the players who had a decent game in the last ODI are players from the Test squad so they would have had time in the middle, getting used to the conditions and getting used to the Pakistani bowlers,” said Estwick after the Windies held a full training session at ICC Academy yesterday afternoon.
“Obviously they are players who are playing in the test series who are playing in the ODI series. So it is important for them to get used to the pitch and the conditions and the Pakistani bowlers as well so there is still a lot for achieve from this game tomorrow”.
Pakistan has been relying on their top order including the fast rising Babar Azam who scored hundreds in the first two ODIs of the series.
West Indies may consider altering their top order to avoid pressure on the middle order.
Explosive opener Johnson Charles has not fired leaving a trail of low scores, the highest being 20.
Reserve opener Evin Lewis, who struck 100 off 49 balls against India last month, could be drafted into the final 11.
Alzarri Joseph, who replaced Shannon Gabriel in the second ODI, is likely to retain his place but there are calls to use Jonathan Carter, who grabbed 4-30 in a warm-up game against Emirates Cricket Board Xl.
“Unfortunately for us we did not have any 50 overs practice so we are now beginning to get use to the pitches,” said Estwick.
“You could see from our last bating performance that it was a lot better. Maybe they got 30 runs to many.”
Today’s match is at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium, Abu Dhabi. First ball is 3pm (7am Eastern Caribbean/6am Jamaica Time).
