DUBAI, UAE– With the ICC T20 World Cup loom­ing on the hori­zon, the West In­dies launch their fi­nal prepara­to­ry se­ries against a dan­ger­ous Afghanistan side in Dubai Sun­day, aim­ing to so­lid­i­fy com­bi­na­tions and fi­nalise their squad for the glob­al show­piece.

Stand-in cap­tain Bran­don King, ad­dress­ing the pre-match press con­fer­ence ahead of the first of three T20 In­ter­na­tion­als, em­pha­sised the crit­i­cal na­ture of the fix­tures.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, every se­ries is im­por­tant. It be­ing that much clos­er to the World Cup, yes, you want to put in good per­for­mances and play well as a team.

First and fore­most, I’m just look­ing to try and con­tin­ue the stan­dards that we set amongst our­selves in this se­ries, and hope to take it on to the World Cup.”

The se­ries marks the re­turn of ex­plo­sive open­er Evin Lewis and fast bowler Shamar Joseph, bol­ster­ing the Caribbean squad, who are still miss­ing a few play­ers to fran­chise com­mit­ments as well as forced rest.

King ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the group, re­serv­ing par­tic­u­lar ex­cite­ment for rook­ie Guyanese bat­ter Quentin Samp­son.

“Samp­son is a new face, and he had some pret­ty ex­cit­ing per­for­mances in our T20 league this sea­son. Hope­ful­ly, he can show some of that skill,” King said.

On the re­turn­ing duo, he added, “Evin and Shamar, we know what they bring to the ta­ble. Evin, with his ex­pe­ri­ence, as well will help this team. We’re miss­ing a few play­ers, so it’s good to have him back.”

The mar­quee con­test, how­ev­er, will pit the Windies bat­ters against Afghanistan’s world-class spin duo of Rashid Khan, who stands just nine wick­ets shy of the mon­u­men­tal 700-wick­et mark in T20 crick­et, and Mu­jeeb Ur Rah­man.

King ac­knowl­edged the scale of the chal­lenge but struck a de­fi­ant tone.

“They’re ob­vi­ous­ly in the bunch of the best T20 spin­ners in world crick­et, so it’s a big chal­lenge, but it’s some­thing that I en­joy. As a team, you try to give the re­spect that they’re due, but it’s T20 crick­et, so you have to be brave, and you have to back your­self to come out on top in a du­el.”

The Dubai en­counter promis­es a fierce bat­tle be­tween West In­dies’ pow­er-hit­ting pedi­gree and Afghanistan’s spin mas­tery, of­fer­ing both teams a cru­cial gauge of their World Cup readi­ness.

CMC