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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

West praises WI pool of talent

by

20161101

COLOM­BO–Head coach Graeme West be­lieves West In­dies A's re­sound­ing suc­cess in the one-day se­ries against Sri Lan­ka is tes­ta­ment to the qual­i­ty of play­ers in the Caribbean first class sys­tem, and a re­minder of the im­por­tance of play­ing more crick­et out­side of the re­gion.

The one-day side white­washed the hosts 3-0, pro­duc­ing a se­ries of dom­i­nant bat­ting dis­plays to win every game com­pre­hen­sive­ly, and com­pen­sate for the four-day side's 2-1 de­feat in the pre­ced­ing un­of­fi­cial "Test" se­ries.

And West said once the de­vel­op­ment shown dur­ing the se­ries here con­tin­ued, the pool of play­ers from which the in­ter­na­tion­al squad was se­lect­ed, would be sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­hanced.

"It goes to show they are a num­ber of play­ers that are emerg­ing from the first class fran­chise sys­tem and they need to have op­por­tu­ni­ties to play over­seas, to play against qual­i­ty op­po­si­tion, to kind of as­sess where they are at and al­so to de­vel­op their skills and broad­en their range of method, in or­der to be able to sup­port the cur­rent play­ers that are in the se­nior team," West said.

"If we can de­vel­op a stronger pool of play­ers to sup­ple­ment what we cur­rent­ly have, it starts to put a lit­tle bit more pres­sure on those play­ers who are cur­rent­ly in po­si­tion [in the se­nior side], and when in­jury or loss of form come along, then there are more play­ers who are able to step up and per­form to a good lev­el that will pro­duce pos­i­tive re­sults."

West In­dies A start­ed im­pres­sive­ly, rout­ing Sri Lan­ka A by 165 runs in Dambul­la and fol­lowed up with a 109-run vic­to­ry in the sec­ond game in Karune­gala, af­ter pil­ing up a stun­ning 347 runs.

The vis­i­tors won a rain-hit con­test on Sun­day, pulling off an eight-run win un­der the Duck­worth/Lewis method, as they once again went past 300.

Open­er Kyle Hope, cap­tain Ja­son Mo­hammed and An­dre Mc­Carthy all man­aged hun­dreds while the ex­cit­ing Rov­man Pow­ell slammed a pair of half-cen­turies.

"It was a great achieve­ment. In the three games we played, we had some out­stand­ing per­for­mances from many of the play­ers from many of the play­ers in the squad," West said as he praised the side's per­for­mance.

"Cer­tain­ly [in the fi­nal game] Mc­Carthy com­ing in­to the team and scor­ing a fan­tas­tic hun­dred was one of the high­lights and it just goes to show the depth and qual­i­ty we had in our squad."

He con­tin­ued: "It was good to play three one-day games. It gave the guys a good op­por­tu­ni­ty. Cer­tain­ly the suc­cess in the one-day games came from our bat­ting post­ing big scores. In games two and three, we went pass 300. That al­lowed the bowlers to build pres­sure.

"In the sec­ond game, a lot of dis­missals were caused by Sri Lankan bats­men hav­ing to force the game or take an ex­tra run."West said what was im­pres­sive was the abil­i­ty of the squad to ac­cli­ma­tise quick­ly and eas­i­ly to the for­eign con­di­tions.

"I think we adapt­ed to the con­di­tions here very well," he not­ed.

"The guys didn't have a great deal of time to set­tle in and no prac­tice games but I think the bat­ting unit in the one-day games was key."


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