GEORGE­TOWN–West In­dies head coach Phil Sim­mons has giv­en the as­sur­ance the play­ers ar­riv­ing from the just con­clud­ed In­di­an Pre­mier League are high­ly mo­ti­vat­ed for the up­com­ing Tri-Na­tions Se­ries start­ing here to­mor­row.

Cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er, along with Kieron Pol­lard, Car­los Brath­waite, Sunil Nar­ine on­ly joined up with the squad re­cent­ly, fol­low­ing their IPL stints for their re­spec­tive fran­chis­es.

But de­spite the long cam­paign and the trav­el in­volved in fly­ing back to the Caribbean from In­dia, Sim­mons said the play­ers were in fine spir­its.

"They are ful­ly rar­ing to go. I can't tell you they are ful­ly re­cov­ered–that's the phys­ios and doc­tors' ar­eas but they are rar­ing to go," the Trinida­di­an said.

Of the four, all eyes will be on off-spin­ner Nar­ine who will be dis­play­ing a re­mod­elled ac­tion in the Caribbean for the first time.

The right-armer was re­port­ed for hav­ing a sus­pect­ed il­le­gal ac­tion dur­ing the se­ries against Sri Lan­ka last No­vem­ber and sub­se­quent­ly banned by the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil and forced to un­der­go re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

He missed West In­dies' Twen­ty20 World Cup tri­umph in In­dia but was cleared to bowl again ahead of the IPL, where he gath­ered 11 wick­ets in as many games at an av­er­age of 27 and econ­o­my rate of sev­en, for Kolkata Knight Rid­ers.

Sim­mons said Nar­ine, along with left-arm spin­ner Sulie­man Benn and off-spin­ner Ash­ley Nurse, were ex­pect­ed to play crit­i­cal roles in the Tri-Na­tions.

He's im­por­tant for West In­dies in the fact he can get wick­ets in the mid­dle as well as Sulie­man Benn and Ash­ley Nurse," Sim­mons point­ed out.

"These are three guys who can get wick­ets in the mid­dle and that's what we need."

West In­dies has spent this week here putting the fi­nal touch­es on their prepa­ra­tion, fol­low­ing a week-long camp in Bar­ba­dos where they played two warm-up match­es against Bar­ba­dos, los­ing both.

How­ev­er, Sim­mons said the Windies al­so worked on tac­ti­cal mat­ters and were fine-tun­ing their ap­proach to the up­com­ing games.

"We are work­ing hard on try­ing to get as many sin­gles as pos­si­ble," he not­ed.

"We are a team that doesn't get as many sin­gles as we would like to and it's some­thing we have worked hard on and are try­ing to im­prove in.

"Gen­er­al­ly, we've been work­ing on the whole think­ing of the game and the whole as­sess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion to make sure we do the right thing in that sit­u­a­tion."

West In­dies open against South Africa to­mor­row at the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um and take on Aus­tralia on Sun­day at the same venue.

The tour­na­ment among the three sides runs from to­mor­row to June26 and will al­so be played in St Kitts and Bar­ba­dos. (CMC)