With the am­bi­tion of be­ing the very first host na­tion to win the cham­pi­onship still very much alive, the West In­dies team will be putting every­thing on the line and go­ing all out when they meet South Africa in their fi­nal, must-win Su­per Eight match of the ICC T20 Men’s World Cup on Sun­day night.

Luck­i­ly, the match will be played in An­tigua, where the team is like­ly to have the sup­port of a roar­ing, sold-out Sir Vi­vian Richards sta­di­um– be­cause they will need it as they tack­le a South African team that, de­spite play­ing some in­con­sis­tent and sub­par crick­et, is one of just three un­beat­en teams re­main­ing in the tour­na­ment.

Af­ter play­ing im­pres­sive­ly in the pre­lim­i­nar­ies, WI dropped from the ranks of the un­de­feat­ed when they lost to Eng­land in their open­ing Group 2 Su­per Eights match, a de­feat that would have im­pact­ed their chances of ad­vanc­ing to the semi­fi­nals.

Show­ing the re­silience of cham­pi­ons, the WI team bounced back bril­liant­ly on Fri­day night and led by a sub­lime bat­ting dis­play by Shai Hope 82 from 39 balls, de­mol­ished the USA by nine wick­ets to keep their hopes of ad­vanc­ing not on­ly alive – but pump­ing with a strong heart­beat as all that’s now in their way of ad­vanc­ing would be to de­feat SA team they have ham­mered in in their fi­nal game tonight.

As Group 2 now stands and all teams play­ing two games, SA are lead­ers with four points, while Eng­land and WI are on two points. How­ev­er, a win for WI tonight and a like­ly win for the Eng­lish against Team USA will see all three teams fin­ish on four points, which will then see the Group de­cid­ed by net run rate.

The healthy win over the US has placed the Windies in poll po­si­tion as they now have a net run rate of +1.81, com­pared to SA’s 0.63 and Eng­land’s 0.41 mean­ing that any win over SA will see them through to the semis in Trinidad where they will take on Aus­tralia. De­feat – and they’re out!

But a vic­to­ry should be on the cards as the WI team should be en­ter­ing the match full of con­fi­dence as they have notched up five wins in the last six T20 match­es be­tween the two teams! While three of those wins were against an un­der-strength SA unit in Ja­maica just be­fore the start of the World Cup, two came against the Pro­teas in their coun­try last year, when they field­ed their strongest pos­si­ble unit!

Then, the Windies topped 200 runs twice, 220 in the first T20 in a sev­en-run win and then 258 runs in the fi­nal game, which they lost af­ter SA re­spond­ed with 259/7 in a record chase. In be­tween the WI had clinched the three-match se­ries with a six-run vic­to­ry in a low-scor­ing sec­ond match, suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ing a small 137/7 when bat­ting first.

Most of the play­ers who were in SA are in this present WI squad and should be lick­ing their chops at the prospects of fac­ing them in a one-off match where all the chips are pushed to the mid­dle of the ta­ble and a place in the semi­fi­nals of a glob­al cham­pi­onship on the line - and play­ing at home and in front of their ador­ing, vo­cif­er­ous fans.

With noth­ing to lose and every­thing to play for, per­haps now is the time for the se­lec­tion com­mit­tee to take the bulls by the horns and make some big and bold changes to the team and even the strat­e­gy for tonight’s cru­cial match.

De­spite two de­cent scores of 44 against Ugan­da, 38 against Eng­land, and 43 against Afghanistan, the first two came off 42 and 34 balls re­spec­tive­ly, with on­ly the tal­ly against the Afgha­nis, who ap­peared shell-shocked, com­ing at an ac­cept­able 27 de­liv­er­ies. His pedes­tri­an scor­ing rate has robbed the team of great starts in the all-im­por­tant pow­er plays seg­ment of the game when field­ing teams are al­lowed just two field­ers out­side of the re­stric­tive 30-yard cir­cle and runs, there­fore, eas­i­er to score in the­o­ry.

In a WI team packed with world-renowned pow­er hit­ters in the mid­dle and low­er or­der, his ap­proach has been baf­fling as has his con­tin­ued se­lec­tion. He has looked - well – bad, short of con­fi­dence and scratchy, with the ball hard­ly find­ing the mid­dle of his bat and on the rare oc­ca­sion it does, of­ten go­ing di­rect­ly to field­ers.

Fate may have in­ter­vened and due to an un­for­tu­nate in­jury to open­er Bran­don King, pow­er­ful left-hand­ed open­er Kyle May­ers has been draft­ed in­to the squad and is avail­able for se­lec­tion he can now be paired with the styl­ish Hope up front for what can be a dy­nam­ic duo.

Along with King, May­ers was in dev­as­tat­ing form in the ODI se­ries against SA be­fore the start of the World Cup and many felt he was un­lucky not to have been el­e­vat­ed off the re­serve list. He may now be giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty and if he does, one thing is cer­tain, he will not be putting much dot-ball pres­sure on the re­main­ing bats­men as his ball-beat­ing, at­tack­ing ap­proach may be just what is need­ed at this phase of the com­pe­ti­tion.

Should the se­lec­tors de­cide to give Charles a rest, they can be­come even bold and bring in some more fire­pow­er in the mid­dle by in­clud­ing yet an­oth­er world-class pow­er hit­ter, Shim­ron Het­my­er in­to the fray. This would no doubt boost the bat­ting con­sid­er­ably with­out tak­ing any­thing away from the over­all team struc­ture, as the Guyanese left­hander is al­so an ex­cel­lent field­er, where­as Charles can be a li­a­bil­i­ty at times, al­ready floor­ing sev­er­al catch­es.

Apart from pos­si­ble per­son­nel changes, the se­lec­tors may al­so want to ad­just their strate­gic ap­proach to the match­es. While it can be and has been very ef­fec­tive, open­ing the bowl­ing with left-arm spin­ner Akiel Hossien has be­come as pre­dictable as An­dre Rus­sell bowl­ing the sec­ond over and Az­zari Joseph be­ing the first change.

Op­pos­ing teams no doubt plan their bat­ting strat­e­gy and ap­proach based on this pat­tern and could per­haps be left at sea and a bit of con­fu­sion if things were changed up just a lit­tle and the new ball be tossed to – Gu­dakesh Motie or Ros­ton Chase (if spin is pre­ferred) or even Joseph – just to change things up and not be so pre­dictable.

With a long and deep bat­ting line­up, what about open­ing the in­nings with Rus­sell? Think about the suc­cess Sunil Nar­ine has had open­ing the bat­ting in fran­chise crick­et be it for the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers or the Kolkata Knight Rid­ers up front. No of­fense to Nar­ine, but Rus­sell is a more nat­ur­al and gift­ed hit­ter of a crick­et ball and if he can get off to a fly­er, it can put any op­po­nent on the back foot and even out of a match af­ter six overs!

In the in­stance it doesn’t work, so what? Noth­ing is lost as there are lots of oth­er big-hit­ting “closers” in the team who can get the job done – and this would be en­hanced with Het­my­er’s in­clu­sion.

On their part, while SA will al­so be en­ter­ing the match with a lev­el of con­fi­dence, as they are yet to taste de­feat in their six tour­na­ment match­es, this con­fi­dence may be a bit frail as five of these wins were by very nar­row mar­gins, in­clud­ing a one-run win over min­nows, Nepal.

Com­ing in­to the Su­per Eights the Pro­tea's bat­ting had been woe­ful, but they may have been boost­ed by their per­for­mance in their win against Eng­land where key man Quin­ton De Kock had his sec­ond ma­jor score of the tour­na­ment (65 off 38 balls) with able sup­port from David Miller with (43 from 25) at the back end in their com­pet­i­tive to­tal of 163.

Their bowl­ing has had to per­form res­cue acts and pull vic­to­ry from what seemed the jaws of de­feat on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions with Kag­iso Raba­da, An­rich Nort­je, and Ot­tneil Baart­man emerg­ing as the he­roes. Sur­pris­ing­ly, one of their more po­tent weapons, spin­ner Tabraiz Sham­si, has been a bit dis­ap­point­ing and did not even fea­ture in their win against the Eng­lish.

A de­feat against the Windies does not have to spell the end for SA, as though al­ready elim­i­nat­ed, the plucky USA will want to end their in­au­gur­al trip to the Su­per Eights of a crick­et World Cup on a high and what bet­ter than an up­set win against the in­ven­tors of the game – Eng­land, when they meet this morn­ing.

With all things be­ing equal, and a WI win tonight, net run rate will de­ter­mine which teams ad­vance and even with a close loss, Eng­land would still be out.

How­ev­er, based on how the Eng­lish an­ni­hi­lat­ed Namib­ia in what was then a must-win fi­nal pre­lim­i­nary round match, the odds are not in fa­vor of a close fin­ish.

What­ev­er the re­sult of the USA/Eng­land match, the West In­dies and SA will en­ter their match know­ing ex­act­ly what must be done to ad­vance and a thrilling game of T20 crick­et should be in store.

WEST IN­DIES – Rov­man Pow­ell (cap­tain), Alzarri Joseph, John­son Charles, Ros­ton Chase, Shim­ron Het­my­er, Shai Hope, Akeal Ho­sein, Shamar Joseph, Kyle May­ers, Obed Mc­Coy, Gu­dakesh Motie, Nicholas Pooran, An­dre Rus­sell, Sher­fane Ruther­ford, Ro­mario Shep­herd.