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Friday, July 18, 2025

Harper: Windies could face ease from COVID-19 bubble

by

Sports Desk
1743 days ago
20201008
West Indies could face an ease in the bio-secure bubble.

West Indies could face an ease in the bio-secure bubble.

CMC

BRIDGETOWN – West In­dies are not ex­pect­ed to face the psy­cho­log­i­cal chal­lenge of a com­plete bio-se­cure bub­ble on their tour of New Zealand start­ing next month, be­cause of the ef­fi­cient man­ner in which pub­lic health au­thor­i­ties in the south Pa­cif­ic na­tion have man­aged the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The Caribbean side were sub­ject­ed to a strin­gent pro­to­cols on the tour of Eng­land last Ju­ly where play­ers were forced to hun­ker down in ho­tels based at the play­ing venues, with lim­it­ed or no in­ter­ac­tion with the gen­er­al pub­lic.

How­ev­er, the Unit­ed King­dom has been hard hit by the pan­dem­ic, re­sult­ing in half-mil­lion record­ed in­fec­tions and 57 000 deaths while New Zealand re­mark­ably has re­port­ed on­ly 1800 in­fec­tions and 25 deaths.

There are cur­rent­ly on­ly 39 ac­tive cas­es.

Con­venor of se­lec­tors, Roger Harp­er, said while all crick­et tours would now be guid­ed by COVID-19 pro­to­cols as part of a new nor­mal of the in­ter­na­tion­al game, New Zealand would pro­vide some respite for play­ers from the dif­fi­cult men­tal grind of con­stant lock­down out­side of crick­et.

“This is the state of the world. There are a lot of peo­ple be­cause of the sit­u­a­tion who do not have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to work and I think this is the per­spec­tive we have to look at this from,” the for­mer West In­dies off-spin­ner told the Ma­son and Guest Crick­et Show on Star­com Ra­dio in Bar­ba­dos.

“We have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to work, we have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play some­thing which I’d like to think they love do­ing. I know it’s chal­leng­ing be­ing away from home at this time be­ing in a dif­fer­ent en­vi­ron­ment but I think we have to look at things from the pos­i­tive per­spec­tive and I think … we have to make ad­just­ments.

“New Zealand is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent to Eng­land in that they have man­aged to be in not a bad a place rel­a­tive to the COVID-19 virus as most places around the world … so they (play­ers) won’t be in a com­plete bub­ble so to speak.

“Once the squad quar­an­tines and they’re no in­fec­tions and every­thing is fine, they’ll have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to move around freely so psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly that should be a lot eas­i­er.”

West In­dies will clash with the Black Caps in three Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­als and two Tests from No­vem­ber 27 to De­cem­ber 15, in their sec­ond tour in four months, fol­low­ing the re­sump­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et.

The squad, which was this week fi­nalised but yet to be an­nounced, will leave the Caribbean on Oc­to­ber 27 to fa­cil­i­tate manda­to­ry quar­an­tine and a train­ing camp, in the buildup to the se­ries which gets un­der­way with a T20 In­ter­na­tion­al in Auck­land.

Ac­cord­ing to Harp­er, ar­riv­ing a month ear­ly in New Zealand would be key to the side’s prepa­ra­tions.

“It will work out a lit­tle bit bet­ter [than re­main­ing in the Caribbean] be­cause the play­ers can have their quar­an­tine and get ac­cli­ma­tised to the ac­tu­al con­di­tions in which they’ll be com­pet­ing,” Harp­er point­ed out.

West In­dies face a stiff chal­lenge es­pe­cial­ly in the longer for­mat as they have not won a Test se­ries on New Zealand soil in 25 years.

Fur­ther­more, they have won just three of their last 19 Tests against the hosts and on­ly sev­en of their last 20 Tests over­all.

How­ev­er, fol­low­ing on from their se­ries win against Eng­land in the Caribbean last year and an im­pres­sive vic­to­ry in the first Test at Southamp­ton last Ju­ly, Harp­er is hope­ful West In­dies can flour­ish in New Zealand.

“I would like to think that we can build on the per­for­mance in Eng­land,” Harp­er said.

“We won a Test match in Eng­land. We won a Test match over­seas – some­thing we haven’t been do­ing that con­sis­tent­ly in the past.

“And while I thought we were in a po­si­tion to do much bet­ter from the way the tour turned out, we’d like to go to New Zealand and be able to build on that, win a Test match over there and try and win the se­ries.

“New Zealand, by the way, is no team to be un­der-rat­ed. They play very well and ex­treme­ly well at home and they beat In­dia in a se­ries down there [re­cent­ly] so we know it’s go­ing to be tough but I think we are ca­pa­ble of putting up very com­pet­i­tive per­for­mances in New Zealand.” CMC


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