Windies stop focusing on Gayle

Chris Gayle could be one of most devastating batsmen in international cricket, but the southpaw is not part of the West Indies team for quite some time due to a dispute between him and the West Indies cricket board.

It is not sure when Gayle — who hasn’t represented the country after this year’s World Cup — would appear again for West Indies in an international match.

It seems the West Indies team have learnt to compete well without Gayle as they had shown signs of improvement in their recent outings.

They had performed exceedingly well against India at home recently and even stunned England in a Twenty20 match last week.

The team, under the captaincy of Darren Sammy, will now take on Bangladesh in three ODIs, two Tests and one Twenty20.

The team are currently in Dubai and will participate in a high performance camp and play three practice matches at the International Cricket Academy Oval Grounds in Dubai Sports City before flying to Bangladesh.

Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Dwayne Bravo are not part of the tour, which starts from October 7.

The team are not worried about the absence of Gayle now, especially after their impressive performances.

Coach Ottis Gibson is focused on developing his young team and has no reasons to worry about the absence of Gayle in the senior squad. “Not when the team is winning,” he told reporters at a Press briefing at the ICC Academy office on Wednesday.

The team manager and former captain Richie Richardson added: “We as a team will have to work with what we have. The issue is clearly between Chris Gayle and the board to sort out. I am not going to comment too much on that. W’ave got a job here to deal with the players they have given to us and we are focusing heavily on these players.”

It is quite clear that Gibson is focused on developing the team with the introduction of some talented youngsters.

“There have been some improvement over the last 12 months. We introduced a few new players like Devendra Bishoo, Andre Russell, and they have played really well. Then we had Kirk Edwards who made a Test hundred on debut against India.

“We continue to improve as a team and continue to understand the game of international cricket better.”

His next target would be to win consistently.

“We competed against some of the best teams but we haven’t been able to win. When we get in to positions to win, we need to capitalise on them.

Unveiling his strategy to focus on youth for the development of Caribbean cricket, he said: “There is a huge focus on development within the region and the Under 19 team is in India at the moment. The higher performance team is here. The senior team is here and so we are trying to develop the game . We are trying to develop cricketers, trying to give them modern day experiences and challenge of playing in different countries. We need to improve and improve quickly. The best we can do is to try and give people a lot of experience in different conditions.

Asked about the importance of the Bangladesh series, the coach said: “I think it is very important. Every series is important. Bangladesh is not going to be easy and we don’t go there expecting it to be easy. Bangladesh is always going to be a tough opponent and even the best teams are struggling against them. So we know that it is going to be tough and their home patch they are a tough opposition. We are looking forward to the series and we feel that we are in a position to come up with strong performances and hopefully win the series. From there we go straight to India and if we win in Bangladesh it will be good for our India tour. We will give them a good contest as well.

Gibson felt the Twenty20 victory over England at the Oval on Sunday was a good step forward.

“Any win is a morale booster. In light of the way we played the first game where we were very poor and the way we improved so quickly and they did not expect us to improve so quickly and we raised our level and we were able to win that game.”

pradeep@khaleejtimes.com