SHAR­JAH– West In­dies cap­tain Shai Hope said he was ready for the dawn of an­oth­er era for his side on Sun­day when they face the hosts Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates in the first One-day In­ter­na­tion­al in their se­ries of three.

The 29-year-old Bar­ba­di­an will lead the No. 10-ranked Caribbean side in­to bat­tle for the first bi­lat­er­al se­ries against the 19th-ranked Emi­ratis, look­ing to fur­ther de­vel­op the col­lec­tive tal­ent, and be­com­ing a more for­mi­da­ble fight­ing force in prepa­ra­tion for the qual­i­fi­ca­tion tour­na­ment for the ICC Men’s ODI World Cup lat­er this year in In­dia.

It will al­so be the first oc­ca­sion for Hope and his team­mates to work un­der the guid­ance of new white-ball head coach Daren Sam­my and his coach­ing staff that in­cludes fel­low for­mer cap­tains Carl Hoop­er and Floyd Reifer, along with for­mer New Zealand all-rounder James Franklin, as they try to re­verse a sor­ry record over the past year in which the vis­i­tors have won on­ly five of their last 18 ODIs.

“I can def­i­nite­ly com­mend the com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­cause I see every­one be­ing clear and frank, and that’s one of the main prin­ci­ples here,” he said in an in­ter­view with CWI Me­dia on the eve of the match. “We didn’t have many train­ing ses­sions to fo­cus on more phys­i­cal stuff, but there’s been more stuff based around the men­tal side of the game and the mind­set.

“We know that Sam­my loves loves his stats and his plan­ning, so I think we’re all on the same page where we’re look­ing to move West In­dies crick­et for­ward. I’m ex­cit­ed to be here, and I’m ex­cit­ed to see the guys com­ing in very nice­ly now, and I hope we can con­tin­ue to do good things for West In­dies.”

The side is with­out a num­ber of reg­u­lar play­ers such as Ja­son Hold­er, Nicholas Pooran, Rov­man Pow­ell, Alzarri Joseph, Kyle May­ers, Akeal Ho­sein, and Ro­mario Shep­herd be­cause Crick­et West In­dies agreed to al­low them time off to rest and re­cu­per­ate fol­low­ing their in­volve­ment with the gru­elling In­di­an Pre­mier League.

Hope said the main fo­cus of the trip, apart from win­ning, was see­ing play­ers grow in­to the roles that have been as­signed to them, so that a core group can be de­vel­oped to serve not on­ly the short-term, but long-term in­ter­est of the side.

“It’s just sim­ply con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment and try­ing to get some pro­gres­sion from here in the UAE and try­ing to see fol­lows im­prove in what­ev­er way they can,” he said. “Even though it’s go­ing to be long and hard jour­ney, I just want to see pro­gres­sion and one per cent of im­prove­ment every sin­gle day.

“I don’t just see it as an­oth­er se­ries be­cause every time we step on­to the park, the aim is to per­form for West In­dies, and it gives some news guys the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case their skills on the world stage, but there are al­so a few mem­bers of the qual­i­fiers squad, so it gives us some prep in the mean­time to­wards that im­por­tant task.

“I just want to see the guys con­tin­ue to grow. The main thing for me is de­vel­op­ment. Over time, we are go­ing to get bet­ter, and hope­ful­ly that one per cent [of im­prove­ment] can be shown here in the UAE.”

Hope said the bat­ting had shown good signs of im­prove­ment over the last year, but he was mak­ing a con­scious ef­fort to be more ag­gres­sive, es­pe­cial­ly in the back-end of the in­nings, and was look­ing to lead by ex­am­ple and spur the oth­er play­ers to bat with a cer­tain de­gree of free­dom.

“I think the way the game is played now, we’ve got to pret­ty much keep up with the times and find ways to adapt and im­prove our games,” he said. “For me, I’m try­ing to be a bit more ag­gres­sive in my stroke­play, and it’s some­thing I want to send down to the team as well.

“I want us to con­tin­ue to fo­cus on try­ing to find ways to score. I think in the past, we just tried to oc­cu­py the crease a bit too much, rather than ex­e­cut­ing our strengths be­cause we’ve been known for scor­ing fast and hit­ting bound­aries se­ries, so it’s a bit of a con­scious ef­fort to im­prove my ag­gres­sion in the mid­dle.”

The area that need­ed the most work, Hope said, was the bowl­ing, es­pe­cial­ly be­ing able to take wick­ets with the new ball and in the mid­dle pe­ri­ods of in­nings to re­strict op­pos­ing sides to more man­age­able to­tals.

“It’s there for us to see,” he said. “We have got the in­for­ma­tion. We have got the stats. It’s just about try­ing to find so­lu­tions to be tak­ing those wick­ets ear­ly on and com­pet­ing a lot more in mid­dle overs be­cause if we al­low bat­ters to get in, it’s go­ing to be very easy for them to set up in the back end to make us chase some big to­tals.”

In the team’s pre­vi­ous ODI se­ries on the Tour of South Africa, Hope bat­ted at No. 4, rather than open the bat­ting, where he has had much of his suc­cess scor­ing most of his 4 452 runs at an av­er­age of 50, mak­ing him one of the most pro­lif­ic in the for­mat over the past few years.

He said where he bats in the or­der re­mained a tick­lish top­ic, but he was will­ing to per­form what­ev­er role the team need­ed in an ef­fort for them to have sus­tained suc­cess, and he hint­ed there could be a sur­pris­ing change in the or­der against the UAE.

“Go­ing for­ward I think bat­ting at four will give us a bit more sta­bil­i­ty than in the past when we had some tough times in the mid­dle overs, es­pe­cial­ly against the spin,” the wick­et­keep­er-bats­man said.

“But in this se­ries, you may see a bit of a change, and the bat­ting line-up may be a bit dif­fer­ent to what we’re ac­cus­tomed to see­ing, so yeah I think that four is the po­si­tion where I’ll stay at this point time and hope­ful­ly it con­tin­ues to work for West In­dies.”

All three ODIs in the se­ries – on Sun­day, Tues­day, and Fri­day – will be played at the Shar­jah In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Sta­di­um.

Squads:

UNIT­ED ARAB EMI­RATES (from): Muham­mad Waseem (cap­tain), Aayan Afzal Khan, Ad­hitya Shet­ty, Ali Naseer, Ansh Tan­don, Vri­itya Ar­avind, Asif Khan, Basil Hameed, Ethan D’Souza, Fa­had Nawaz, Jonathan Fi­gy, Ju­naid Sid­dique, Lovepreet Singh, Matiul­lah Khan, Ka­think Meiyap­pan, Mo­hammed Faraazud­din, Muham­mad Juwadul­lah, Rameez Shahzad, Ro­han Mustafa, San­chit Shar­ma, Aryansh Shar­ma, Za­hoor Khan.

WEST IN­DIES (from): Shai Hope (cap­tain), Bran­don King (vice cap­tain), Al­ick Athanaze, Shamarh Brooks, Yan­nic Cari­ah, Kea­cy Car­ty, John­son Charles, Ros­ton Chase, Do­minic Drakes, Kavem Hodge, Akeem Jor­dan, Gu­dakesh Motie, Keemo Paul, Ray­mon Reifer, Odean Smith.

CMC