Estwick: Windies optimistic to face South Africa

SOUTHAMPTON, England (CMC):

While the Windies won’t be underestimating South Africa in their ICC Cricket World Cup encounter today, assistant coach Roddy Estwick says the regional side is confident they can come out victorious.

The two sides will meet in a crucial match-up, with South Africa having lost their first three games and the Windies coming off a heartbreaking loss to Australia.

While Estwick believes the Proteas will come out firing in a “must-win” game for them, he is still backing his side to pick up the valuable two points.

“We are obviously confident, but we have to respect South Africa as well. They are a good side. They have lost three games. We know they have got world-class players, so we can’t underestimate their ability, and we have to go out and play hard and smart cricket and stick to our game plans.

“We have to target 100 overs. At the end of the 100 overs, we have got to make sure that we are on the winning side. We just can’t single out one part of the game. Once you do that and that part of the game has any resistance, then your game plan falls down. We have a plan for 100 overs, and we have to go and execute,” Estwick maintained.

“There are areas that we can still improve. We are looking to do better, and we can still improve. We can cut down the extras in one or two areas. We have missed a few chances as well, so these are areas we can back up on. We are more focused on ourselves, and if we can execute our skills well, then it will take care of the process.”

BOWLING IMPRESSIVE

The assistant coach said the Windies’ bowling unit has been impressive so far.

He said the fact that the Windies had dismissed their opponents for less than 300 in both games in what has been a high-scoring tournament showed their quality.

“Before the start of the tournament, everybody was saying that teams are going to make 360, 380, some teams will make 400, some teams will make 500. We bowled both teams out for under 300 runs, so we are very happy with the way the bowlers have executed.

What we must do is play the one percenters a bit better, and I’m sure if we did that in the last game, we would have won the game. It’s nothing to do with the bowlers. We are all in it together. We are not going to single out the bowlers and say the bowlers did a poor job or the batsmen did a poor job; it is a team. If you are looking for excuses in the cricket game, you can find it wherever you look,” Estwick said.

Estwick said that while both Andre Russell and Chris Gayle had picked up “some nicks”, they would both be available for today’s game.