West Indies team management is banking on quality feedback from its Indian Premier League stars ahead of their Group B clash against India in the ICC Champions Trophy, here tomorrow.
West Indies coach Ottis Gibson said the IPL stars are expected to provide "intelligence" on the Indian players in their team meeting as he admitted that the Twenty20 league inputs will play a crucial factor for the Calypso Charmers.
"Well, that's one of the key things, I think. Everybody has got video of each other now. We watch so much footage of each other, but we also have a lot of our players mixing with the Indian players in the IPL," Gibson told reporters at the pre-match press conference.
"Our players, Dwayne (Bravo), Chris (Gayle), (Kieron) Pollard especially and Sunil Narine have been starring in the IPL, so hopefully they've got a lot of information to share when we get back this evening. We'll have a really good discussion about the Indian players and stuff like that, and those guys will form the main part of that meeting," added Gibson.
The winner of tomorrow's game will earn a guaranteed berth in the Champions Trophy semifinals. Both India and West Indies have won the tournament once before.
Gibson ruled out chin music against the Indians. The former pacer from Barbados, who has been England's bowling coach, admitted the current squad did not have the class and caliber of the pacemen of the Eighties.
"The last time we used short pitch bowling it was Joel Garner, Colin Croft, Michael Holding and people like that. We don't have those guys, those tall guys anymore, so as we saw against Pakistan, we pitched it up, we swung it a little bit and we put it in the right areas, and I suppose that will be the strategy going forward," Gibson said.
