West In­dies head coach Phil Sim­mons has urged his un­der­strength Windies team in Bangladesh to look at the tour as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to stake a claim for their po­si­tion in the side. In his first press con­fer­ence via Zoom on Tues­day since ar­riv­ing in Dha­ka on Sun­day, Sim­mons said this se­ries is the be­gin­ning of prepa­ra­tions for West In­dies’ 2023 One Day In­ter­na­tion­al (ODI) World Cup.

The re­gion­al side is play­ing in the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil’s (ICC) Men’s Crick­et World Cup Su­per League which runs from Ju­ly 2020 to March 2023. That tour­na­ment in­cludes all the ODI play­ing na­tions and the bot­tom two teams will be forced to take part in play­off match­es to qual­i­fy for the tour­na­ment in In­dia three years from now.

“It’s the start of prepa­ra­tions for the World Cup. It’s the tour­na­ment to qual­i­fy for the World Cup we’re play­ing in so it’s the start,” Sim­mons said. He went fur­ther in ex­plain­ing that this crop of West In­dies play­ers has the chance to be part of this jour­ney. “My mes­sage to all the play­ers here is you’re not here to fill in but you’re here to give your­self a chance. You have a chance now to stake a place in this team. If you do well here, that augers well for you go­ing for­ward,” the Trin­bag­on­ian fur­ther stat­ed.

The for­mer West In­dies bats­man went fur­ther in stat­ing the tough task that is be­fore his side on the sub-con­ti­nent. He said, “The first thing is to win the se­ries. I think it’s al­ways go­ing to be hard when you’re away from home. If you watch around the world, every team around the world plays well at home. It’s go­ing to be a hard se­ries, but the first as­pect is to win the se­ries. The sec­ond is to make sure we pre­pare well and give the play­ers the best op­por­tu­ni­ty to per­form.”

Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) has con­firmed all the play­ers on tour test­ed neg­a­tive up­on ar­rival. Sim­mons said he is hap­py with the com­po­si­tion of the squad se­lect­ed with both his front­line Test bowlers in Ke­mar Roach and Shan­non Gabriel in Bangladesh. The Bar­ba­di­an Roach was forced to re­turn home ear­ly from the New Zealand Test se­ries af­ter his fa­ther passed away. Spin­ners Veerasam­my Per­maul and Rah­keem Corn­wall are al­so part of the Test squad. Hav­ing made his Test de­but in 2012 in Dha­ka against Bangladesh, Per­maul’s last match for the West In­dies was in 2015 against Aus­tralia. “I think we’re here with a bal­anced unit. We have three spin­ners, three fast-bowlers and a seam­ing all-rounder so it’s a case where we have bal­anced all-round so the de­ci­sion hasn’t been made yet whether we’re go­ing with three fast-bowlers and two spin­ners… no de­ci­sion has been made yet,” he stat­ed.

Among his bowl­ing ar­mour in the ODI squad is T&T left-arm spin­ner Akeal Ho­sein, whom the Windies coach said could prove to be an es­sen­tial bowler in the three-match se­ries. Sim­mons ex­plained, “In the CPL we saw what he can do with­in the pow­er­play and the lat­ter parts of the in­nings. He’s al­so a bril­liant field­s­man and can hold his own with the bat too. We hope that he can set­tle and form a part­ner­ship with Hay­den Walsh Jr. as we go through this se­ries.”

Even with­out some of his key se­nior play­ers, Sim­mons has said he’s found no prob­lem in mo­ti­vat­ing this squad, but he did ad­mit that it would be a mis­take to think the re­gion­al side goes in­to the se­ries with the up­per hand. “Bangladesh is clear­ly the favourites be­cause they’re at home and they play well at home so they have to be favourites. We can’t ar­gue with that,” he added.

The first of three ODIs bowls off on Jan­u­ary 20th with the two-match Test se­ries start­ing on Feb­ru­ary 3rd. The re­gion­al boys will play a One Day warm-up match on Jan­u­ary 18th at the BKSP Sta­di­um in Savar. There will al­so be a four-day warm-up match be­fore the start of the Test se­ries be­tween Jan­u­ary 28th and 31st.