CARDIFF–Cap­tain Dwayne Bra­vo yes­ter­day found him­self hav­ing to push back against sug­ges­tions West In­dies was one of the favourites to win the ICC Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy start­ing next week.

While West In­dies en­ters the June 6-23 tour­na­ment as reign­ing Twen­ty20 cham­pi­on, its form in the 50-over for­mat has not been en­ter­pris­ing, los­ing eight of its last 13 One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als.

Bra­vo shared that West In­dies did not con­sid­er it­self favourites and did not feel un­der any pres­sure to live up to such a tag.

"Well, last year in Sri Lan­ka we were cast as favourites and we end­ed up win­ning, so it's good to be favourites again. Hope­ful­ly, we win this time," Bra­vo quipped.

"But hon­est­ly we don't think we are favourites. We just want to con­cen­trate on what we have to do. We're in a very tough group, and first of all, we want to take it step by step, try and sur­vive that group.

"The talk around is it's the group of death, so hope­ful­ly we get out of the group of death and then take it from there."

He con­tin­ued: "A tour­na­ment like this, it's short, and you nev­er know what can hap­pen.

"Be­ing favourites, it's good that oth­er teams can ac­tu­al­ly–and me­dia peo­ple can ac­tu­al­ly look at us as favourites, but we don't see our­selves as favourites.

"We just want to be hum­ble and go about our busi­ness in our own way and let the man above take care of our des­tiny."

West In­dies has been in­stalled in a tough Group B that in­cludes reign­ing World cham­pi­on In­dia, South Africa and the un­pre­dictable Pak­istan. The top two from each group will progress to the semi­fi­nals.

The Caribbean side is gear­ing up for the cam­paign with its sec­ond camp in as many weeks, be­fore clash­ing with Aus­tralia in the first of­fi­cial warm-up game on Sat­ur­day, fol­lowed by a game against Sri Lan­ka next Tues­day.

West In­dies was white­washed 5�0 by Aus­tralia Down Un­der ear­li­er this year but Bra­vo be­lieves the re­sult could be dif­fer­ent this time around on neu­tral soil.

The weath­er is ex­pect­ed to play a key role in the tour­na­ment, with wet win­try con­di­tions still af­flict­ing Eng­land and Wales. On its Test and one-day tour of Eng­land last year, West In­dies suf­fered in the con­di­tions, win­ning just one game.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the chal­lenges posed by the weath­er, Bra­vo said his side would be do­ing its best to quick­ly ac­cli­ma­tise to the for­eign con­di­tions. CMC

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