Clive Lloyd: Bowling could hold the key

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BallOil
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Clive Lloyd: Bowling could hold the key when West Indies face Pakistan

Games between West Indies and Pakistan have always been close over the years and I fully expect it to be the same again at Trent Bridge for the opening match on Friday.

We played a couple of semi-finals at ICC Men’s Cricket World Cups against them at The Oval and they were great games. Pakistan have had formidable sides, with good all-rounders, solid batters and a good bowling attack.

It was not just Imran Khan. You had guys like Sarfraz Nawaz and Asif Iqbal as well, and then the batting was very good too with Majid Khan, Zaheer Abbas and Javed Miandad.

We certainly never took them lightly when we came up against them.

Looking at the West Indies coming into the first game, if we are consistent and play to our strengths I’m sure we can give a very good account of ourselves and surprise a few people.

If someone like Chris Gayle can get away often, that will set the platform for the rest of the team.

The scores will be pretty big at this World Cup. As we have seen here, 300 is a gettable score. You look at England, Jos Buttler is the sort of guy who can take a game away from you. We have a player like that in Andre Russell, while the captain Jason Holder can bat. Shimron Hetmyer didn’t do a lot in the IPL, but he’s another who can be just as destructive when he gets the chance and Shai Hope is a young man in very good form and with a lot of confidence.

The good thing with the West Indies side is that we bat very deep so if we get a platform, then we can get a good score.

Some people will look at Pakistan losing to Afghanistan in a warm-up game and worry about it, but you shouldn’t read too much into the warm-up matches. They are there for people to test things out and the results do not really matter.

The difference with Pakistan’s batting compared to the West Indies is they have a few players like Babar Azam, Imam-ul-Haq and Fakhar Zaman who score hundreds. They do not get in and get out, they tend to go on. That is what our players have to learn. We maybe have a few too many players who are happy to score 50 or 60, when instead they need to go on and get big scores.

The bigger question marks for both teams are in the bowling. The West Indies bowling hasn’t been as strong in the build-up to the tournament.

And when you look at Pakistan, their spin department has been good but they have struggled for wickets at the start of innings.

The fast bowlers have not really been consistent enough, and in this competition you need to get early wickets. It will be really interesting against West Indies because if they don’t get any early wickets, then we could make a really big score.

Trent Bridge was always a good wicket when we played there, and it’s a great place to play cricket. So that should make for a really interesting game. (ICC)
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