NOTTINGHAM, England – West Indies head coach Floyd Reifer spoke to CWI Media ahead of the team’s second match in the ICC Cricket World Cup. Following an impressive display in all three departments in the opening win against Pakistan, two-time World Cup winners face Australia on Thursday. First ball is 10:30am (5:30am Eastern Caribbean Time/4:30am Jamaica Time).
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Coverage will be LIVE on ESPN and ESPN2 in the Caribbean. ESPN Play – ESPN’s multiscreen live and on-demand broadband service – will stream all the matches.
“We are focussed on playing our brand of cricket. We are creating the brand of cricket they want to play which is an aggressive, smart, confident, fearless cricket and that’s the brand we’re continuing to play no matter what who is the opposition.”
Reifer said it was great to see the energy displayed in the opening win against Pakistan and expects a similar level of enthusiasm on Thursday as they seek to maintain their position at the top of the ten-team standings. Last week West Indies bowled out the Pakistanis for 105 and then motored to the target, to secure victory by seven wickets with 218 balls to spare. Fast bowler Oshane Thomas earned the Player-of-the-Match award and was presented with his trophy by the great Sir Vivian Richards. The 22-year-old has now captured nine wickets for 48 runs in his last two ODIs – following up on his career-best 5-21 when he bowled out England for 113 in Saint Lucia in March.
“The performance against Pakistan was very good. What was really good about it is that the guys went out there and executed the plans. The spell that (Andre) Russell bowled was the game-changing spell. I thought he bowled really fast and put the Pakistan batsmen on the back foot. Oshane bowled some quick balls as well. He came in and kind of polished off the job but all in all it was a very good team performance. In the field as well, we fielded well. The guys had a lot of energy in the field, the attitude to the fielding was there and all in all I thought it was a very good performance by the team,” Reifer said.
FULL SQUAD
Jason Holder (Captain)
Chris Gayle (Vice Captain)
Fabian Allen
Carlos Brathwaite
Darren Bravo
Sheldon Cottrell
Shannon Gabriel
Shimron Hetmyer
Shai Hope
Evin Lewis
Ashley Nurse
Nicholas Pooran
Kemar Roach
Andre Russell
Oshane Thomas
MATCH SCHEDULE
(First ball is 5:30am Eastern Caribbean/4:30am Jamaica; unless otherwise stated)
May 31: West Indies beat Pakistan by 7 wickets – Nottingham
June 6: vs Australia – Nottingham
June 10: vs South Africa – Southampton
June 14: vs England – Southampton
June 17: vs Bangladesh – Taunton
June 22: vs New Zealand – Manchester (8:30am EC Time/7:30am Jamaica)
June 27: vs India – Manchester
July 1: vs Sri Lanka – Chester-le-Street
July 4: vs Afghanistan – Leeds
Semi-Finals
July 9: 1st vs 4th – Manchester
July 11: 2nd vs 3rd – Birmingham
The Final
July 14: Semi-final Winner 1 vs Semi-final Winner 2 – Lord’s
July 15: Reserve Day
-CWI
