West In­dies leg­end Sir Curt­ly Am­brose says that Trinida­di­an Nicholas Pooran has to prove him­self be­fore he is se­lect­ed to play Test crick­et for the West In­dies.

The 57-year-old Am­brose who took 404 Test wick­ets for the West In­dies said: "There is no doubt that Pooran is a spe­cial tal­ent and has done well in T20 crick­et. How­ev­er, there is a process in place and he has to go through that process be­fore he is se­lect­ed to play Test crick­et.

"Let him play First Class crick­et and show us how good he is in the longer for­mat be­fore he is in­clud­ed in the Test team. He has done re­al­ly well in T20 crick­et but he needs to prove that he can get suc­cess in the longer for­mat of the game."

Pooran has been se­lect­ed for the West In­dies team's tour of New Zealand and will take part in the three T20 match­es which be­gins on No­vem­ber 28. He will al­so fea­ture with the West In­dies 'A' team in two four-day First Class match­es as well. This will give him an op­por­tu­ni­ty to show what he can do in the longer for­mat of the game.

Mean­while, Am­brose thinks that the West In­dies team can de­feat New Zealand in the three-match T20 and two-match Test se­ries.

"The West In­dies team has the qual­i­ty to com­plete and even beat New Zealand in New Zealand. While the New Zealan­ders play well at home, both teams will be start­ing from scratch and, the West In­dies have to back them­selves.

"The bowl­ing is good enough to take 20 wick­ets to win a Test match, so the bat­ting has to come good."

The An­tiguan who last toured New Zealand in 2015 as the West In­dies bowl­ing coach said the bat­ting is a bit of a wor­ry but he is still con­fi­dent. "The bat­ting has to click in or­der for us to win. It is up to the bats­men to bat­tle well and give the bowlers some­thing to work with.

"Dur­ing the last se­ries against Eng­land, the West In­dies bat­ting was good in the first Test and they went on to win the match. When the bat­ting failed in the oth­er two Test match­es, we lost the games."

The West In­dies made 318 and 200/6 to win the open­ing Test at the Agaes Bowl in Southamp­ton. They then had scores of 287, 198, 197 and, 129 in the re­main­ing two Tests at Old Traf­ford in Man­ches­ter which they lost, to sur­ren­der the Wis­den Tro­phy 1-2.

Af­ter the T20 seg­ment of the tour, the West In­dies will play two Test match­es against the Ki­wis, with the first start­ing on De­cem­ber 2 and the sec­ond on De­cem­ber 10.

The West In­dies team left Bar­ba­dos at 6 pm yes­ter­day evening and will ar­rive in New Zealand on Thurs­day night. All these squad mem­bers have com­plet­ed COVID-19 tests and were all giv­en a clean bill of health to trav­el.

On ar­rival in New Zealand, the squad will be based in Christchurch where they will quar­an­tine be­fore com­menc­ing train­ing and warm-up match­es. There are two squads, one for the three-match T20 In­ter­na­tion­al (T20I) Se­ries and one for the two ICC World Test Cham­pi­onship match­es which fol­low im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter­wards. Six re­serve play­ers will trav­el with the Test squad to pre­pare and en­sure re­place­ments are avail­able in case of any in­jury and, along with oth­er mem­bers of the T20I squad, will form an ‘A’ Team to play two four-day match­es con­cur­rent­ly with the Test team.

This is the West In­dies sec­ond tour in 2020, the on­ly in­ter­na­tion­al team to ful­fil two away tours dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

John­ny Grave, CEO of CWI, said the or­gan­i­sa­tion is ful­ly com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing the game thrives amidst the chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

“As the play­ers and sup­port staff de­part on the jour­ney to New Zealand, we wish them the very best – this is a very im­por­tant tour for us as we build to­wards de­fend­ing our ICC T20 World Cup ti­tle and al­so com­plete an­oth­er se­ries in the ICC World Test Cham­pi­onship. Fans all around the world have been miss­ing their favourite sports, so we want to con­tin­ue to play our part to bring joy and smiles to the faces of those who sup­port and en­joy our crick­et,” Grave said.

“This itin­er­ary and sched­ule took a lot of de­tailed plan­ning and we want to thank every­one who played a part in putting it to­geth­er. In the present COVID-19 en­vi­ron­ment every­thing re­quires great at­ten­tion to de­tail. Our med­ical and lo­gis­tics teams here have been work­ing very close­ly with their coun­ter­parts in New Zealand to en­sure every­one would be in a safe en­vi­ron­ment which is al­so con­ducive to ex­cit­ing and en­ter­tain­ing crick­et on the field.”

Phil Sim­mons leads the coach­ing staff as head coach. The coach­ing staff in­cludes Rod­dy Es­t­wick, Mon­ty De­sai, Ray­on Grif­fith, An­dre Co­ley and Trevor Pen­ny, as the as­sis­tant coach­es.