Vin­ode Mam­chan

The small ground and ex­cel­lent bat­ting track at Warn­er Park in St. Kitts is ex­pect­ed to play in­to the hands of the big hit­ting West In­di­ans when they come up against Aus­tralia in their third match of the Ballr Tri-Se­ries to­day at 1.30pm.

The Aus­tralians rock­et­ed to the top of the stand­ings af­ter their win over South Africa on Sat­ur­day night and now have nine points from three match­es. The South Africans fol­low with five points and the West In­dies four.

West In­dies wick­et­keep­er/bats­man De­nesh Ramdin who clout­ed 169 in an ODI here two years ago is itch­ing to get un­to the Park. "The pitch here is good for bat­ting and we are look­ing for­ward to play­ing here. Guyana was dif­fi­cult but now comes a chance for us to re­al­ly make some runs. I have been work­ing hard over the past few weeks and I am hop­ing that the bat­ting come to­geth­er here to give bowlers some­thing good to work with."

Al­though the pitch is ex­pect­ed to favour the faster bowlers with some pace and bounce ear­ly on, West In­dies will still be de­pend­ing on mys­tery spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine who grabbed 8/69 in the Guyana leg. Nar­ine al­so has an im­pres­sive record at Warn­er Park with 10 wick­ets at 10.60 in four ODIs at the venue.

Aus­tralia, on the oth­er hand, will be miss­ing the im­por­tant stroke play­er David Warn­er, who slammed a half cen­tu­ry against the West In­dies in Guyana and then record­ed 109 against Aus­tralia on Sat­ur­day. Warn­er frac­tured his left in­dex fin­ger and will not play to­day.

Warn­er not­ed that the West In­dies will how­ev­er be a dan­ger­ous unit here say­ing :"We know that giv­en a small ground, the im­pact that the big play­ers the West In­dies have, we're go­ing to have to be on from ball one and re­al­ly hit our lengths and not miss our mark."

West In­dies will be wary of their neme­sis Mitchel Starc who has been bril­liant since his re­turn to in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et af­ter a six-month lay-off. He needs five more wick­ets to reach 100 in ODIs and if he achieves that dur­ing this se­ries he will be­come the first to that land­mark.

TEAMS:

West In­dies: John­son Charles, An­dre Fletch­er, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Mar­lon Samuels, De­nesh Ramdin (wk), Kieron Pol­lard, Car­los Brath­waite, Ja­son Hold­er (capt), Sulie­man Benn, Sunil Nar­ine and Jerome Tay­lor.

Aus­tralia: Travis Head, Glenn Maxwell, Aaron Finch, Us­man Khawa­ja, Steven Smith (capt), George Bai­ley, Mitchell Marsh, Matthew Wade (wk), James Faulkn­er, Mitchell Starc, Adam Zam­pa and Josh Ha­zle­wood.

STAND­INGS:

Team P W L NR T PTS NRR

Aus­tralia 3 2 1 0 0 9 +0.639

South Africa 3 1 2 0 0 5 +0.002

West In­dies 2 1 1 0 0 4 -0.904