Kieron Pollard is looking forward to seeing his senior stalwart Chris Gayle contribute to another World Cup win.
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West Indies skipper Kieron Pollard was full of praise for legendary cricketer Chris Gayle, ahead of the upcoming edition of the T20 World Cup. Gayle is 97 runs short of becoming the leading run-getter in T20Is, which will certainly motivate the player going into the prestigious tournament. The veteran missed the last few matches of Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 due to bubble fatigue. Pollard stated that he was looking forward to seeing his senior stalwart make his presence felt.
“No words to describe what he has done for us in the T20 World Cups and in T20 cricket around the world. The guy with the most sixes, most runs, the fear he instils in bowlers. The main goal is for him to win the World Cup and he is looking forward to that. He did what he did in terms of taking a break. He needed it. This is another big tournament for him. I hope everyone understood the nature of what transpired. Living in bubbles is difficult. If a guy who enjoys himself in any situation can’t take it, it shows how difficult it can be for some of us. We are backing him to do well,” said Pollard in a media interaction organised by the ICC as quoted by Cricinfo.
The Windies cricketer was further full of praise for fellow all-rounder Dwayne Bravo, who recently helped Chennai Super Kings (CSK) win IPL 2021.
“I think he has shown time and again what he brings to any team. For Chennai to go on and win was a fabulous team effort, and for him personally to continue doing what he does at the back and to close out matches for teams was superb. There’s no pressure on him, we’re all looking to ‘sir’ to all that in this campaign,” stated Pollard.
The all-rounder sounded confident going into the upcoming edition of the T20 World Cup, with a lot of players enjoying quality experience in the recently concluded edition of IPL.
“It [IPL experience] was good, not just for us but all players involved in the World Cup, who got a feel of what is on offer. There will be some stats comparison and trends that may have come out of the IPL. We have to take all that into consideration, take the context of the surfaces, atmosphere, and put them into our game plan. For us, most of our guys got a chance to play recently here, so for us it’s about trying to hit the ground running, start off on a positive note, get those first two points and see what happens after that,” said Pollard.
“You’ve seen it all around the world, that is how we go about our cricket. Lot of people, analysts at different times, harp on dot balls, singles, ones and twos. Everything is important, but we still have to play to our strengths. I’m not going to say what that is because then the heading will be ‘West Indies just want to hit sixes’. We need to keep our strengths as strengths and work on our weakness. Have a lot of powerful guys in the line-up, but if the situation warrants, we also have guys who can manoeuvre strike, run between the wickets. We look forward to playing complete games of cricket,” he concluded.
