BRIDGETOWN – Cap­tain Kieron Pol­lard on Mon­day un­der­scored the im­por­tance of mak­ing a suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion to the longer for­mat amid the re­cent heavy di­et of Twen­ty20 crick­et, as West In­dies pre­pared to face Aus­tralia in the open­ing One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al (ODI) of the three-match se­ries in Bar­ba­dos on Tues­day.

West In­dies dom­i­nat­ed the pre­ced­ing five-match Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al se­ries in St Lu­cia, win­ning 4-1, but Pol­lard said it was crit­i­cal play­ers ad­just­ed their mind­sets to the ODI ver­sion, es­pe­cial­ly with more time avail­able over 50 overs.

How­ev­er, he point­ed out that with key play­ers like Shai Hope and Dar­ren Bra­vo re­turn­ing for the se­ries, they would help to fu­el the ap­proach re­quired, es­pe­cial­ly among the bat­ting group.

“We’re sup­posed to be pro­fes­sion­als … so in terms of mak­ing the tran­si­tion, it’s a mind­set. In any­thing that you do, it’s from a mind per­spec­tive,” the Trinida­di­an told an on­line me­dia con­fer­ence.

“About six or sev­en guys have left the T20 squad and about six or sev­en guys are com­ing in­to the ODI team. Hopey (Hope) is com­ing back, he was not in the T20 team. He has an ap­petite for scor­ing runs and bat­ting long.

“Dar­ren Bra­vo got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play one T20 match [against Aus­tralia] but his last ODI score would’ve been a hun­dred as well, so a cou­ple of the guys com­ing in are guys we ex­pect to sort of bat long and who love bat­ting long.

“With that as­pect of it, it’s just a mat­ter of the T20 guys to con­tin­ue their mo­men­tum – not curb their nat­ur­al in­stincts – but un­der­stand it’s a longer for­mat of the game.”

The right-hand­ed Hope has been in sub­lime form in ODIs, slam­ming a hun­dred and two half-cen­turies in the three-match se­ries against Sri Lan­ka last March.

Over­all, the 27-year-old av­er­ages 53 from 81 ODIs and with ten hun­dreds, is one of the world’s lead­ing play­ers in the for­mat.

Bra­vo, mean­while, is al­so com­ing off a hun­dred against the Sri Lankans and is ex­pect­ed to help shoul­der the bur­den of the bat­ting.

With world-rat­ed all-rounder Ja­son Hold­er and off-spin­ning all-rounder, Ros­ton Chase, al­so re­turn­ing, and left-han­der Shim­ron Het­my­er com­ing off a strong T20 se­ries, West In­dies are ex­pect­ed to present a for­mi­da­ble bat­ting line­up.

Pol­lard, who missed the T20 se­ries through in­jury, re­it­er­at­ed re­cent com­ments from head coach Phil Sim­mons that 300-plus to­tals were the goal dur­ing the up­com­ing se­ries, es­pe­cial­ly in light of the qual­i­ty bat­ting avail­able.

“Those [to­tals] are in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards. But if we do well and we bowl well – if we bowl first and lim­it the op­po­si­tion – we just have to make what’s in front of us,” he ex­plained.

“But in terms of from a bat­ting per­spec­tive, that’s in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards – 300, 320, 330. We had start­ed off this quest when we first start­ed a cou­ple of years ago try­ing to find the right bal­ance and com­bi­na­tion.

“I think we’ve sort of found that and now it’s a mat­ter of the next step, which is to con­sis­tent­ly hit those tar­gets. As I keep say­ing, it’s a work in progress and I think we have the per­son­nel in the dress­ing room to do that.

“But we still have to go and play each ball on its mer­it, we still have to re­spect con­di­tions and we still have to re­spect op­po­si­tions.”

The ODIs fall in the mid­dle of the home side’s prepa­ra­tion for this Oc­to­ber’s T20 World Cup, and on the heels of a five-match T20 se­ries against Pak­istan start­ing here lat­er this month.

But Pol­lard said there was val­ue in the ODIs, es­pe­cial­ly with points go­ing to­wards qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 2023 World Cup in In­dia.

“Every one-day game that we play is very, very im­por­tant, and is geared to­wards 2023 – which is in the fu­ture and which in all hon­esty I don’t like to speak about,” he said.

“But in terms of 50-over crick­et, we have to play each game like it’s a quar­ter-fi­nal knock­out be­cause it’s the points that are go­ing to have val­ue in the back end, so we have to be fo­cussed on that and we have to be fo­cussed on win­ning.

“That’s our main fo­cus and hope­ful­ly guys can buy in­to it and hit the ground run­ning at the start of this se­ries.”

SQUADS:

WEST IN­DIES – Kieron Pol­lard (cap­tain), Shai Hope (vice cap­tain), Fabi­an Allen, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Ros­ton Chase, Shel­don Cot­trell, Shim­ron Het­my­er, Ja­son Hold­er, Akeal Ho­sein, Alzarri Joseph, Evin Lewis, Ja­son Mo­hammed, An­der­son Philip, Nicholas Pooran, Ro­mario Shep­herd.

AUS­TRALIA – Aaron Finch (cap­tain), Ash­ton Agar, Wes Agar, Ja­son Behren­dorff, Alex Carey, Dan Chris­t­ian, Josh Ha­zle­wood, Moi­ses Hen­riques, Mitchell Marsh, Ben Mc­Der­mott, Ri­ley Mered­ith, Josh Philippe, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swep­son, Ash­ton Turn­er, An­drew Tye, Matthew Wade, Adam Zam­pa.

CMC