ST JOHN’S – Buoy­ant West In­dies have their sights fixed on on­ly their fourth se­ries win in sev­en years but are braced for a back­lash from a smart­ing Sri Lan­ka, in the sec­ond One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al set to bowl off in An­tigua on Fri­day.

The Caribbean side dom­i­nat­ed the vis­i­tors in the open­ing game on Wednes­day to come away with an eight-wick­et vic­to­ry and are aware that an­oth­er favourable re­sult at the Vi­vian Richards Crick­et Sta­di­um, will go a long way in eras­ing re­cent bit­ter mem­o­ries.

How­ev­er, cog­nizant they al­so won the open­ing Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al in the re­cent se­ries be­fore Sri Lan­ka hit back in the sec­ond, vice-cap­tain Shai Hope said Thurs­day it was im­por­tant the home side made the nec­es­sary im­prove­ments so there was no false sense of se­cu­ri­ty.

“We need to fo­cus on those things and high­light them in what­ev­er meet­ings and dis­cus­sion we have and we must not be com­pla­cent,” said the el­e­gant right-han­der, whose classy 110 in the open­er proved the de­cid­ing fac­tor.

“We pret­ty much played one of the best games that we have played in a while, es­pe­cial­ly with the nu­cle­us of the team com­ing back to­geth­er af­ter such a long time, and it is about iden­ti­fy­ing things that we can im­prove up­on.

“We ex­pect [Sri Lan­ka] to come back a lot stronger than they did in the first game, so we need to make sure that we are ready for any­thing they throw at us. We will need to adapt as fast as we can.

“The main thing is not to be com­pla­cent and re­lax be­cause we won the first game, so it is go­ing to hap­pen again.

“No … crick­et does not play that way. Crick­et is played on the day and we have to make sure we come out with all guns blaz­ing and take a 2-0 lead.”

Hope’s re­turn fol­low­ing a year away from ODIs was a calm­ing in­flu­ence for a side whose bat­ting has been sus­pect in re­cent times.

More sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the 27-year-old style has been in stark con­trast to the pow­er-hit­ters like Evin Lewis, Nicholas Pooran and cap­tain Kieron Pol­lard, and has en­sured West In­dies have not been one di­men­sion­al.

Crit­i­cised in the past for their in­abil­i­ty to ro­tate the strike, Hope said it was im­por­tant West In­dies bats­men con­tin­ued to make use of this vi­tal as­pect of their game in or­der to elim­i­nate the high dot ball per­cent­age.

“We al­ways look at our­selves as pow­er-hit­ters and ball-beat­ers but there is so much more to our game that we can achieve if we can merge the two ap­proach­es,” he ex­plained.

“If we can lim­it the dot-balls and score off the bound­ary balls that come along, then we can have a lot more big to­tals and con­sis­tent­ly.

“We have been work­ing on pick­ing up those sin­gles and oth­er scor­ing op­tions and mak­ing sure we have a clear mind about how we are go­ing to play a par­tic­u­lar bowler to get those sin­gles to keep the score­board tick­ing over.”

Per­haps one of the more pleas­ing as­pects of the West In­dies’ per­for­mance in the last ODI was their bowl­ing, with the com­bi­na­tion of pace and spin prov­ing dis­ci­plined in their ap­proach.

With Sri Lan­ka can­ter­ing on 105 with­out loss, the Windies hit back to bowl the vis­i­tors out for 232 – claim­ing the last nine wick­ets for 127 runs.

Hope said West In­dies were keen on pre­vent­ing Sri Lan­ka from get­ting off to an­oth­er strong start by tak­ing wick­ets ear­ly on.

“That is some­thing we want to im­prove up­on as a unit. We all know ear­ly wick­ets will peg back any team so hav­ing looked at the stats and see­ing where we do need to im­prove, then we can put some things in place,” he stressed.

“Again, crick­et is a game you have to play on the day and no mat­ter what plan you have for the op­po­si­tion, they may still be good enough to deal with it and it may not al­ways go our way.

“But the key is to make sure that we stay with­in the game plan or what­ev­er is work­ing and if we can’t take wick­ets, we have to lim­it the runs.”

Sri Lan­ka will be with­out their most ex­pe­ri­enced ODI play­er in An­ge­lo Math­ews who re­turned home on Thurs­day to deal with a fam­i­ly mat­ter.

SQUADS:

WEST IN­DIES – Kieron Pol­lard (cap­tain), Shai Hope (vice-cap­tain), Fabi­an Allen, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Ja­son Hold­er, Akeal Ho­sein, Alzarri Joseph, Evin Lewis, Kyle May­ers, Ja­son Mo­hammed, Nicholas Pooran, Ro­mario Shep­herd, Kevin Sin­clair.

SRI LAN­KA – Dimuth Karunaratne (cap­tain), Da­sun Shana­ka, Danush­ka Gu­nathi­lake, Pathum Nis­san­ka, Ashen Ban­dara, Os­ha­da Fer­nan­do, Di­nesh Chandi­mal, Niroshan Dick­wella, This­ara Per­era, Ka­min­du Mendis, Wanin­du Hasaranga, Ramesh Mendis, Nuwan Pradeep, Asitha Fer­nan­do, Dush­man­tha Chameera, Ak­i­la Danana­jaya, Lak­shan San­dakan, Dil­shan Madushanka, Suran­ga Lak­mal.

CMC