BRIDGETOWN – Oman cap­tain Aqib Ilyas says pre-tour­na­ment camps in Bar­ba­dos and Trinidad helped his side ac­cli­ma­tise to Caribbean con­di­tions, ahead of their open­ing game of the Twen­ty20 World Cup against Namib­ia Bar­ba­dos lat­er Sun­day.

The Gulf State will clash with Namib­ia at 7.30 pm in the third game of the ICC show­piece at sto­ried Kens­ing­ton Oval, and Ilyas be­lieves the time spent in Bar­ba­dos was crit­i­cal for the squad.

“The first thing is it’s re­al­ly great to be part of the main stage [of the] World Cup T20 and Oman has done re­al­ly well,” he said.

“Over the years, they’ve been qual­i­fy­ing in the elim­i­na­tors and now we have made it to the main stage and our prepa­ra­tions, they are re­al­ly good.

“First good thing is our man­age­ment, they got us be­fore over here three weeks [and] we had a camp in Bar­ba­dos so we can get ac­cli­ma­tized to the sit­u­a­tion.

“And then the thing is the wick­ets and every­thing, we played three games over here which were re­al­ly use­ful to us in Bar­ba­dos. We got to know that the wick­ets are a bit at a slow­er side and we had some qual­i­ty prac­tice games.

“Af­ter that we went to Trinidad where we played two prac­tice games – one against [Papua New Guinea] and Afghanistan which Oman did re­al­ly well.

“It’s mo­ti­vat­ing us and … we are not think­ing much about all the games. First game is against Namib­ia so we are fo­cus­ing on the first game and we are think­ing on the pos­i­tives on­ly.”

Namib­ia, mean­while, will be fea­tur­ing in their third suc­ces­sive T20 World Cup, af­ter top­ping their African qual­i­fy­ing group.

And cap­tain Ger­hard Eras­mus al­so said fa­mil­iaris­ing them­selves with the con­di­tions had been key to their prepa­ra­tions.

“We’ve been here for a fair while now. So St Kitts was good, Trinidad was very good, so dif­fer­ent to what we’re used to with hu­mid­i­ty and stuff but we pride our­selves on good fit­ness and good stan­dards,” he said.

“It’s been get­ting used to and ac­cli­ma­tised to per­haps on­ly the hu­mid­i­ty and the type of sweati­ness and per­haps on and off show­ers, that type of thing.”

Kens­ing­ton Oval will host nine match­es in the T20 World Cup – five in the group stage, three in the Su­per Eight sec­ond stage, and the fi­nal on June 29

The venue has al­ready staged two ICC fi­nals – the 2007 50-over World Cup and the 2010 T20 World Cup.

CMC