WEST INDIES white ball captain Kieron Pollard wants to go 'one step further' against India when the three-match One-Day International (ODI) series bowls off in Ahmedabad, India on Sunday from 4 am (TT time).
The last time the maroon ODI team toured India, in 2019, they won the opening match but lost the next two to lose the series 2-1.
Back then, Pollard also served as West Indies skipper. This time around, he seeks a different result. India have, however, lost just one ODI home series in the past six years.
'For us, it's another opportunity to improve our skills, another opportunity to test where we are in international cricket against a formidable Indian team. The last time we were here, if my memory jogs me right, we did okay.
'We didn't win the series, but we pushed them. So now we're looking to push that one step further. Having said that, we need to put our heads together and try to improve in every area of our game we fell short against Ireland,' he said during Saturday's pre-match zoom media conference.
West Indies lost their last three-match ODI series against Ireland 2-1, three weeks ago. They did however; bounce back in the shortest format to steal a nail-biting 3-2 T20 International series victory over England, just one week ago.
After the series triumph over England on Sunday, the Caribbean team immediately left en route to India, where they were mandated to quarantine for three days.
The team was only allowed one training session, with small groups, on Friday and was only able to host one full-team training session on Saturday.
Amid these challenges, Pollard said the team must push on and try to grind out positive results.
'For us, we have to crack on. Today (Saturday) is the only full practice we had, and then we have to have our meetings and discussions, and stuff like that.
'We know these are some of the things people don't want to hear and understand because we need to perform on the cricket field, but these are some of the challenges we have to face as international cricketers.
'The most we can do in a short space of time is to try and be in the right mental space, have discussions about it, sort of visualise and plan as to how we want to go about it,' he added.
The all-rounder said the team must adapt, learn from the ODI loss against Ireland and try to bat their quota of 50 overs per match.
He continued, 'For this series against India, the learning we need to take forward is how we bat 50 overs. We haven't batted 50 overs in the last couple of series against Ireland and Australia (July 2021), so that is something we need to look at. As a team, we need to follow the template and plans that are put out there so that we can go out there and be successful.'
Pollard is confident that he can lead the team to victory against a covid19-stricken India team, who will be without the likes of top order batsmen Shikhar Dhawan, Shreyas Iyer and Ruturaj Gaikwad and reserve fast bowler Navdeep Saini, owing to the virus.
India's fielding coach T Dilip, security liaison officer B
