Vin­ode Mam­chan

For­mer West In­dies cap­tain Dar­ren Sam­my is feel­ing the ef­fects of a stiff back but is de­ter­mined to play, when West In­dies come up against Pak­istan in their sec­ond match of the ICC Crick­et World Cup against Pak­istan on Sat­ur­day (Fri­day evening Caribbean time).

Sam­my stroked a won­der­ful 89 in the open­ing loss to Ire­land and is now strug­gling to be ful­ly fit ahead of the must-win sec­ond match. News com­ing from the West In­dies camp is that the St Lu­cian will play "no mat­ter what", giv­en the per­ilous po­si­tion that the West In­dies finds it­self in.

Yes­ter­day, the team did not train as is cus­tom­ary 48 hours be­fore a match. They did some gym work, as well as swim­ming and then had a two-hour plan­ning ses­sion at their ho­tel in Christchurch.

To­day, the re­gion­al play­ers will arm them­selves with bat and ball and go down to Ha­gley Park for a ses­sion, which will al­so in­clude field­ing drills.

Left arm spin­ner, Sulie­man Benn is al­so suf­fer­ing from a stiff back and is fight­ing against the clock to be fit for the game.

Apart from the two men with in­jured backs, the oth­er play­ers are all fit and rar­ing to go, look­ing to bring their team back in­to the tour­na­ment.

Af­ter the open­ing game, it has been agreed that the se­nior play­ers would take more of a hands on ap­proach in as­sist­ing young cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er. The Bar­ba­di­an re­mains strong de­spite his less than im­pres­sive start as cap­tain and se­nior men in Sam­my, Chris Gayle and Mar­lon Samuels are now go­ing to come more in­to the fore as the tour­na­ment pro­gress­es.

Chair­man of se­lec­tors, Clive Lloyd has made the trip over to New Zealand and has been speak­ing to the play­ers, try­ing to in­spire them and get them to be­lieve in them­selves. They will face a Pak­istan team that is again em­broiled in con­tro­ver­sy. Grant Lu­den ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion af­ter be­ing re­port­ed­ly de­ject­ed over the at­ti­tude of some play­ers. It is al­leged that he was un­hap­py with the be­hav­iour of Shahid Afri­di, Ahmed She­hzad and Umar Ak­mal and ac­cused them of abu­sive be­hav­iour.

The team man­age­ment put in a lot of ef­fort to per­suade Lu­den to with­draw his res­ig­na­tion, as­sur­ing him that all his griev­ances will be ad­dressed. Lu­den was dis­ap­point­ed with Pak­istan's poor show in the open­ing match against In­dia on Sun­day which they lost by 76 runs at the Ade­laide Oval. The South African coach was up­set af­ter some crick­eters ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion over his work­ing ways. Lu­den then de­cid­ed to call it quits.

Lu­den was ap­point­ed by for­mer Pak­istan Crick­et Board (PCB) chair­man Na­jam Sethi on May 30, 2014, af­ter he was re­lieved by Bangladesh from the same post at the con­clu­sion of the 2014 World Twen­ty20.

The South African was ap­point­ed soon af­ter Waqar You­nis was hired as head coach, Mush­taq Ah­mad as bowl­ing coach and Grant Flower as bat­ting coach.