Sport - Cricket

Final chance for the teams to assess themselves

DREAMING BIG: Ramnaresh Sarwan will look to fire against India to boost his confidence ahead of the World Cup. — Photo: AP

Montego Bay (Jamaica): India will be looking to give finishing touches to its preparations as well as gain some psychological edge when it takes on host West Indies in the final round of World Cup warm-up matches at the Trelawny stadium on Friday.

As the quadrennial event hurtles towards a formal launch on March 11, the other big guns too would be keen to pick a few vital clues from the opposite camp.

Australia takes on England at Kingstown in St. Vincent, Pakistan goes up against South Africa at St. Augustine (Trinidad) and New Zealand squares up against Sri Lanka in Bridgetown (Barbados).

The support staff of competing teams would be out with the magnifying glasses to spot the chinks in the others' armoury as well as to form impressions about the behaviour of the pitches.

Pakistan and New Zealand, in particular, have much to gain and lose after their sloppy first practice game. Any slip-up now wouldn't do any good to their confidence.

Bowling concerns

Australia, too, is a side closely watched by those who still want to make sense of their five defeats in the last six international matches.

It has some worries in the bowling department and needs to address them in its quest for a hat-trick of World Cup titles.

It's the India-West Indies game that would attract the most attention since the latter has some invaluable tools to play with in its backyard. The Caribbeans are adept at making best use of the low and slow wickets where the batsmen have to grind and the bowlers have to show discipline.

India also has a chance to show that fielding or running between the wickets would not be an issue in its campaign.

All eyes on Sehwag

It would like to see Virender Sehwag fire, and Robin Uthappa and Dinesh Karthik to get some runs. Two integral members of the side, Yuvraj Singh and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, would also be hoping to spend more time in the middle.

Though Rahul Dravid is aware about the team's needs, he would want to sort out a few unsettled issues with regard to the combination. He admits that it would take an immense balancing act to register a win and at the same time work out a few theories on which the team has been working of late.

West Indies has issues of its own and Ramnaresh Sarwan is in urgent need of some runs. Coach Bennett King, however, dismissed fears over captain Brian Lara's lack of action in the middle and backed the record-breaking batsman to star in the World Cup.

The 37-year-old Lara hasn't played since his team's defeat against India at Vadodara on January 31. Since then he has been forced to sit out the Caribbean domestic series final, and did not bat in the warm-up match win against Kenya on Tuesday.

No problem

But, King insists that lack of action would not hamper a player with 10,136 ODI runs under his belt. ``Within the space of one or two days, Brian is usually back to his best because of the work he has done before,'' said King.

``He has played 16 years, he has a lot of volume under his belt. He is very keen to play, he is like a spring chicken at the moment. He is jumping out of his seat to play.

``We were disappointed with some aspects of the Kenyan game,'' King said. ``We have just got to be much tougher. We need better batting and we need to bowl much better.

``We are bowling far too many wides — three to four overs more. That is an area in which we need to improve. We are also giving boundaries off the last ball of the overs. We need to start working on finishing our overs properly.''

Weak link

Many in the game admire West Indies' dashing array of strokemakers, but recognise that the side's weak point is its bowling.

King singled out Ian Bradshaw as an example of one bowler who needs to improve.

``Bradshaw has not been playing a lot of cricket for Barbados so he is someone who needs work,'' said King. ``He really needs some bowling under his belt so Friday will be another opportunity for him.'' — Agencies

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