Vin­ode Mam­chan

One day af­ter all rounder Dar­ren Sam­my was beat­ing up his chest about the West In­dies chances of de­feat­ing New Zealand in their World Cup quar­ter-fi­nals tonight at Welling­ton, bowl­ing coach Curt­ly Am­brose took a more re­al­is­tic view, say­ing that con­sis­ten­cy must come in­to his team's play in or­der to win.

At 9pm (TT time) tonight, West In­dies will square up against favourites for the ti­tle, host New Zealand at the 'Cake Tin' in Welling­ton. There will be a full house cheer­ing on the Ki­wis in tem­per­a­tures that will be hov­er­ing around 19 de­grees cel­sius.

There has al­so been a pre­dic­tion of gusty winds lat­er in the evening with the match get­ting off at 2pm lo­cal time, it will sure­ly play a fac­tor.

Hence the bowlers need to be at the top of their game ac­cord­ing to Am­brose :"I am a re­al­is­tic per­son, I am not one to say that we are bowl­ing good when we are not. We need to be more con­sis­tent. We have achieved our first goal and that is to reach the knock­out stages, prepa­ra­tion has been go­ing well but it is re­al­ly cold here at Welling­ton. We are work­ing hard, this is it, this is not the pre­lims, once you lose you are out. The bowlers are work­ing very hard and look­ing to get it right, they need to be con­sis­tent in this big game."

West In­dies will be keep­ing fin­gers crossed over the avail­abil­i­ty of open­er Chris Gayle, who has been bat­tling a back in­jury. It has been touch and go with the left hand­ed Ja­maican, be­ing good one day and flat out the next. Dur­ing the last match against the UAE, he was de­clared fit the day be­fore the match but on the morn­ing of the game, he was un­able to play.

Am­brose thinks that Gayle's at­ti­tude will pull him through: "Gayle has not been ful­ly fit for years. We ex­pect him to play, we know what kind of play­er he is, once he can stand up and bat, he will come through. We need him to give us a good start at the top of the or­der and al­though we have to wait un­til be­fore the match to make sure, I think he will pull through. He missed prac­tice yes­ter­day, af­ter tak­ing a cor­ti­sone in­jec­tion the day be­fore to as­sist with his pain."

New Zealand is cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic know­ing ful­ly well that the West In­dies have po­ten­tial match win­ners.

Coach Mike Hes­son is ful­ly aware of the dan­gers of un­der-es­ti­mat­ing West In­dies. "When you think they're down, one of their play­ers comes out and plays an ex­plo­sive in­nings or bowls a spell that can take out of the game. Some­times it's eas­i­er to play a side that's a bit more pre­dictable."

TEAMS

?West In­dies: Ja­son Hold­er (capt), Chris Gayle, Dwayne Smith, John­son Charles, Mar­lon Samuels, Jonathan Carter, Lendl Sim­mons, De­nesh Ramdin, Dar­ren Sam­my, An­dre Rus­sell, Jerome Tay­lor, Ke­mar Roach, Shel­don Cot­trell, Sulie­man Benn and Niki­ta Miller.

New Zealand: Bren­dan Mc­Cul­lum (capt), Corey An­der­son, Trent Boult, Grant El­liot, Mar­tin Gup­till, Tom Lath­am, Mitchell Mc­Cle­naghan, Nathan Mc­Cul­lum, Kyle Mills, Adam Milne, Luke Ronchi, Tim Southee, Ross Tay­lor, Daniel Vet­tori and Kane Williamson.