NORTH SOUND, An­tigua – West In­dies white-ball re­cruit Matthew Forde said de­vel­op­ing his bat­ting and be­com­ing a true all-rounder is where he to take his game in the im­me­di­ate fu­ture.

The 21-year-old Bar­ba­di­an was one of the two new­com­ers named in the Caribbean side for their se­ries of three One-day In­ter­na­tion­als against Eng­land, start­ing on Sun­day at the Vi­vian Richards Crick­et Ground about five miles out­side of the An­tigua & Bar­bu­da cap­i­tal of St John’s.

“My goal is to be to be the No 1 all-rounder in the world and to put West In­dies crick­et back to where it needs to be – at the top,” the for­mer West In­dies Un­der-19 all-rounder said in an in­ter­view with CPL Me­dia.

“For me, and a cou­ple of the younger guys like me, we work re­al­ly hard in terms of fit­ness, the men­tal side of the game, the­o­ry, what­ev­er it be. We are al­ways work­ing be­cause we know what we want to achieve, and we know the goals that we have set and planned out as a col­lec­tive group.”

Forde has two half-cen­turies in top-flight crick­et – in the Lan­ka Pre­mier League Twen­ty20 tour­na­ment and in the West In­dies Su­per50 tour­na­ment that end­ed last month in Trinidad, where he rep­re­sent­ed the Crick­et West In­dies Acad­e­my side.

Forde said he was look­ing for­ward to re­unit­ing with cur­rent West In­dies white-ball coach, Daren Sam­my af­ter the for­mer West In­dies cap­tain gave him his big break in the sport with the St Lu­cia Kings dur­ing the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) T20 tour­na­ment last year.

Sam­my, who al­so coach­es the Kings in the CPL, brought Forde in­to the fran­chise on the rec­om­men­da­tion of for­mer Bar­ba­dos and West In­dies left-arm pac­er, Pe­dro Collins, one of the Kings' as­sis­tant coach­es.

“I think he (Sam­my) has been, if not the back­bone, he has been the main guy for me in terms of giv­ing me that op­por­tu­ni­ty and trust­ing me, be­liev­ing in me,” Forde said. “I start­ed open­ing with the new ball for the Kings and he trust­ed me. I just kept per­form­ing un­til he built that trust in me.

“I think CPL was the foun­da­tion. CPL re­al­ly start­ed it all be­cause with­out CPL then the rest of the world wouldn’t see me. CPL was my first ma­jor tour­na­ment. So, for me that’s like CPL was the foun­da­tion. And I will al­ways say the Kings will al­ways be in my heart.”

Forde was a sur­pris­ing choice in the West In­dies ODI squad af­ter he man­aged on­ly five wick­ets at 31 apiece for the CWI Acad­e­my in the Su­per50 Cup cam­paign.

But lead West In­dies se­lec­tor Desmond Haynes said he had been “im­pres­sive”, de­scrib­ing Forde as “a whole-heart­ed crick­eter”.

“He is one of the play­ers com­ing through the CWI Acad­e­my pro­gramme who can form part of the fu­ture,” Haynes said.

CMC