West Indies upbeat over Roach, Bravo return

Sydney, Feb 4 (IANS) West Indies coach Stuart Williams Wednesday welcomed the return of pacer Kemar Roach and middle-order batsman Darren Bravo to the side preparing for the World Cup starting Feb 14.

Roach was forced to withdraw from the West Indies side during the series in South Africa due to an ankle injury while Bravo opted out of the tour for personal reasons, reports CMC.

The two players are now in Sydney with the rest of the team, which suffered Tests and One-Day International (ODI) series loss against South Africa but prevailed in the Twenty20 series.

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“Kemar Roach had left the series in South Africa with an ankle injury and he looked refresh and raring to go. Darren bravo came out of the NAGICO (domestic) series and he has some cricket under his belt,” said Williams.

“So these couple of warm-up games against England and Scotland is very important especially to a guy like Kemar Roach… to see what he has in his tank”.

West Indies play warm up matches against England Monday and Scotland next week at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG).

The two-time World Cup champions will start their campaign against Ireland Feb 16.

“Looking from the South Africa series, these two guys I hope they bring a different field to the whole team, maybe the spark we needed in the World Cup,” said Williams.

“The guys are looking upbeat, and I saw some passion in the past couple of days so they are raring to go.”

The Caribbean side has been focusing on specific areas during its training such as power play overs, middle overs, batting and bowling.

“Basically we have a couple of days to deal with specifics,” said Williams