00:00The men in maroon are already in Sri Lanka for their White Ball Tour, where the West
00:05Indies will play a series of three T20 internationals starting this Sunday at the Ranjiri Dambulla
00:10Stadium, followed by three ODIs at the Pala Kelly International Stadium from the 20th
00:15of October. The Windies will be without some big names in Andre Russell, Nicholas Puran,
00:20Shimran Hetmaya and Aqil Hussain. However, coach Darren Sami likes the timing of the
00:25tour.
00:26The good thing is we're coming from our Caribbean Premier League, so most, if not all the guys
00:33have been playing cricket, which is a plus when you have a series that comes so close
00:38after a tournament. So us travelling here to Sri Lanka, the most important thing is
00:45the recovery of the guys and we're going to have a couple of days to do that and a training
00:52session before our first game on the 13th. But looking from what transpired in the CPL,
01:00my guys are ready to take on a really strong Sri Lankan team.
01:04On the matter of not having some of his established stars available, Sami sees this as an opportunity
01:09to discover and develop the talent pool.
01:11Given some guys, some opportunities with the World Cup coming up in less than 20 months,
01:20with some of our senior players being unavailable, I'm looking to see how far, how great our
01:31depth could be. Obviously, the main purpose is to win series. We've been doing well so
01:37far and giving guys opportunities to, like you said, to help build and develop.
01:44And with some of the upcoming standouts from the CPL on tour, like Shemar Springer and
01:48Terence Hines, Sami is confident they can find their niche.
01:52The roles that they are going to be playing, especially with the ball in the backhand,
02:00is a role that we are looking for and trying to find specific guys to do that. So this
02:08series, although it's short, only three games, but it gives them the opportunity to see and
02:13have a taste of the international flavour of cricket. So hopefully, when the opportunity
02:21comes, we could judge where they are.
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