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KINGSTON – With on-ly one game of their One Day In-ter-na-tion-al (ODI) se-ries against Sri Lan-ka be-ing played, West In-dies white-ball cap-tain Shai Hope has stressed the im-por-tance of the up-com-ing five-match se-ries against New Zealand to-wards the re-gion-al team au-to-mat-i-cal-ly qual-i-fy-ing for the 2027 ICC World Cup.
Sri Lan-ka won the three-match ODI se-ries 1-0 af-ter the fi-nal game on Mon-day at Sabi-na Park in Ja-maica, was aban-doned with-out a ball be-ing bowled due to per-sis-tent show-ers.
The Windies lost last Wednes-day’s open-er by 41 runs, with the sec-ond match on Sat-ur-day al-so be-ing rained out.
The re-sult end-ed the West In-dies’ streak of four straight ODI se-ries vic-to-ries at home and left the 10th-ranked West In-dies 11 points be-hind Bangladesh for the ninth and fi-nal au-to-mat-ic qual-i-fy-ing spot for next year’s World Cup.
Speak-ing af-ter Mon-day’s rained out con-test, Hope said the re-sults against Sri Lan-ka meant the Windies need-ed to take full ad-van-tage of the five ODIs against New Zealand, with the open-ing match set for Ju-ly 11 in Guyana.
“Those games are ex-treme-ly im-por-tant. I will con-tin-ue to stress that every sin-gle game mat-ters, every sin-gle is very im-por-tant for us, es-pe-cial-ly now.
“I wouldn’t say it’s crunch time as yet, but the im-por-tance of every game, we need to look at it as if it’s the last one. So not to put any pres-sure on the group, but to put some im-por-tance on what we have to do in the next com-ing days,” Hope said.
While the dis-ap-point-ed skip-per de-scribed the Sri Lan-ka se-ries as “un-for-tu-nate”, he said they had learned sev-er-al lessons that he hoped would serve them in good stead against New Zealand.
“First-ly, we can’t con-trol Moth-er Na-ture. It’s just un-for-tu-nate that we couldn’t get in two sol-id games of crick-et to give our-selves a chance to get back in the se-ries, but we still have to see the im-por-tance of play-ing every sin-gle mo-ment that we get, be-cause we didn’t know what was go-ing to hap-pen to-day or the pre-vi-ous ODI.
“We will take the learn-ings from the first game, and I still must give cred-it to the guys when they did well. I think the bowlers hit the straps es-pe-cial-ly in the first pow-er-play, and it’s an area that we fell down in the last cou-ple of years so it’s good to see we can pick some pos-i-tives from that first ODI,” Hope said.
“Hope-ful-ly, we can take those learn-ings in-to the New Zealand se-ries. It’s un-for-tu-nate we couldn’t get in two sol-id games to make it a se-ries win for us, but we can’t con-trol the weath-er.”
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