CRICKET-PREVIEW Hope says Windies have to unsettle Sri Lanka’s spinners

BALAGOLLA, Sri Lanka, CMC – West Indies ODI captain Shai Hope has admitted that their batters must find a way to overcome Sri Lanka’s wily spinners if they are to claw their way back into the series.

The regional side lost Sunday’s rain-affected opening ODI by five wickets under the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method. It must win the two remaining games to emerge victorious in the series.

Similarly to the just concluded T20 series, Sri Lanka has relied heavily on its spinners to suppress the Windies’ batters.

In the first ODI, their four spinners bowled 31 of the 38 possible overs in the West Indies while accounting for all four wickets to fall and conceding only 139 runs at a stingy run rate of 4.50 runs an over.

Speaking ahead of Wednesday’s second ODI, Hope said the West Indies needed to devise a plan to unsettle Sri Lanka’s spinners.

“We know their main threat will be the spin, but we have to look at the power play and see how we can attack it.

“And then how will we somehow attack their spinners, putting them under pressure? We have to play different shots or look at different scoring areas, push a little harder to make them think,” Hope pointed out.

“If we allow them to set and bowl, they will be all over us. So as a batting group, we have to put a lot more pressure on their bowlers to give ourselves the best chance to get big scores on the board.”

Hope said that while defeating Sri Lanka at home would not be easy, the West Indies were up for the challenge.

He said the group was focused on improving all aspects of their game and climbing the ICC rankings.

“We know exactly what is in front of us. We have to play the next game like a final, see where we’re at in terms of the rankings on the world stage, and find ways to get better and improve quickly,” Hope said.

“Having said that, we have to make sure we take each game at a time, and seeing what happened in the previous game, we have to look at the learnings we can find there, understand how we need to improve our bowling and batting.

“I think we have our work cut out. The conversations we’ve had over the last 48 hours or so have been pretty good, and I think we’re in good head space to bounce back on Wednesday,” the skipper added.