NOTTINGHAM, England – West Indies captain Jason Holder spoke to members of the media ahead of his team’s much-anticipated opening match in the ICC Cricket World Cup. West Indies will face Pakistan on Friday at Trent Bridge in Nottingham. First ball on Friday is 10:30am (5:30am Eastern Caribbean Time/4:30am Jamaica Time).
Follow West Indies: www.windiescricket.com
Follow The Tournament: https://www.cricketworldcup.com
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.
“The magnitude of this tournament speaks for itself. This is the big stage … our first match… we have a team with some experienced players and others new in their international careers. We are all excited, the entire group is ready for this challenge. We anticipate a big crowd and we know our fans back home will be up early to see every ball. As I said previously, we just want to take it stage by stage, game by game. It doesn’t matter where we are playing, we just have to assess the conditions and be as professional as we possibly can. So, I won’t to sit here and try to narrow it down to one or two grounds that we’re particularly looking to favour. We’re just looking to play solid cricket, whatever the conditions may be, we have to find a method and a way to be successful,” Holder said.
West Indies enter the tournament in good form. They scored a huge 421 against New Zealand to win by 91 runs in the last official warm-up match and Holder said that performance with the bat, backed up by excellent bowling, gave them much-needed confidence to face the Pakistanis.
“One thing I like coming into this tournament, is that every player is in a good frame of mind. Everybody is playing with a smile on their face, and I think that is how we play our best cricket. We’re fearless, we enjoy what we’re doing and we enjoy one another’s company. I can safely say within the group we’ve got that. We have an atmosphere that we would like to create, and we’ve got the energy going into this tournament that we want to have,” Holder said.
“The rest is left down to us on the field. We just have to execute whatever plans we formulate, and I think execution is key in this tournament. The teams which execute their plans and be as disciplined as they can, more often than not they’re going to come out on top.”
| FULL SQUAD | SHIRT | AGE | ODIs | CWCs |
| Jason HOLDER (Captain) | 8 | 27 | 95 | Second |
| Fabian ALLEN | 97 | 24 | 7 | First |
| Carlos BRATHWAITE | 26 | 30 | 33 | First |
| Darren BRAVO | 46 | 30 | 107 | Third |
| Sheldon COTTRELL | 19 | 29 | 14 | Second |
| Shannon GABRIEL | 85 | 31 | 22 | First |
| Chris GAYLE (Vice Captain) | 45 | 39 | 289 | Fifth |
| Shimron HETMYER | 2 | 22 | 25 | First |
| Shai HOPE | 4 | 25 | 54 | First |
| Evin LEWIS | 17 | 27 | 35 | First |
| Ashley NURSE | 5 | 30 | 50 | First |
| Nicholas POORAN | 29 | 23 | 1 | First |
| Kemar ROACH | 24 | 30 | 85 | Third |
| André RUSSELL | 12 | 31 | 52 | Third |
| Oshane THOMAS | 42 | 22 | 9 | First |
MATCH SCHEDULE
(First ball is 5:30am Eastern Caribbean/4:30am Jamaica; unless otherwise stated)
May 31: vs Pakistan – 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
