West Indies eye T20 series win over New Zealand

With a win over Bangladesh in their last T20I series, West Indies white-ball captain Shai Hope says his troops are bursting with confidence ahead of their matchup with New Zealand.

The Windies, who are coming off an impressive 3-0 series win over Bangladesh, will take on the fourth ranked New Zealand in the first of five T20Is on Wednesday.

It was just their second bilateral T20I series win in nine outings and halted a losing slide following defeats to Nepal, Pakistan and Australia.

The regional side has not defeated New Zealand in a T20I series since 2012 and has lost three consecutive series to the Black Caps.

However, speaking in a pre-match press conference on Tuesday, Hope said the West Indies were still on a high and were hoping to carry that momentum into the New Zealand series.

“Coming off that 3-0 victory that we had in Bangladesh is a great confidence booster for us as a team, so it’s just to keep challenging ourselves and testing ourselves to see where we’re at as a team and building to that World Cup.

“…You have to take a lot [of pride], especially going into conditions that you may not have faced ever in your career and getting the success that we’ve had says a lot about the unit, the strength of the unit and like I said it’s a great confidence booster going into this series,” Hope said.

“It’s a place I’m sure the batters and even the bowlers will be much happier to be playing on these surfaces, but yes, confidence booster from Bangladesh, and hopefully we can turn things around in New Zealand and get a lot more success here.”

Hope acknowledged that the conditions in New Zealand were expected to be much different from the ones they faced on the Asian subcontinent.

Therefore, he said it would be important for the players to adapt to those conditions as quickly as possible.

“Slightly different conditions, maybe totally different conditions, but as we all know it’s one of the biggest things of being a professional cricketer; you have to be able to adapt to the conditions you go into.

“Like I always speak about, conditions, dimensions, adaptability, and in this particular situation you have to understand that I don’t just expect the New Zealand bowlers to put it in the slot for the shorter straight boundaries either, so it’s about understanding what you’re going to get and formulating those plans to be as successful as possible, whether with bat in hand or ball in hand,” Hope explained.

“On the back of that success in Bangladesh it’s about trying to repeat. We want to be a very good team and it’s about consistency and if you want to be the best you have to beat the best in their home territories, so it’s something else we need to tick off our boxes.”

(CMC)