Hope: Remaining ODIs even more important for World Cup qualification

KINGSTON – With only one game of their One Day International (ODI) series against Sri Lanka being played, West Indies white-ball captain Shai Hope has stressed the importance of the upcoming five-match series against New Zealand towards the regional team automatically qualifying for the 2027 ICC World Cup.

Sri Lanka won the three-match ODI series 1-0 after the final game on Monday at Sabina Park in Jamaica, was abandoned without a ball being bowled due to persistent showers.

The Windies lost last Wednesday’s opener by 41 runs, with the second match on Saturday also being rained out.

The result ended the West Indies’ streak of four straight ODI series victories at home and left the 10th-ranked West Indies 11 points behind Bangladesh for the ninth and final automatic qualifying spot for next year’s World Cup.

Speaking after Monday’s rained out contest, Hope said the results against Sri Lanka meant the Windies needed to take full advantage of the five ODIs against New Zealand, with the opening match set for July 11 in Guyana.

“Those games are extremely important. I will continue to stress that every single game matters, every single is very important for us, especially now.

“I wouldn’t say it’s crunch time as yet, but the importance of every game, we need to look at it as if it’s the last one. So not to put any pressure on the group, but to put some importance on what we have to do in the next coming days,” Hope said.

While the disappointed skipper described the Sri Lanka series as “unfortunate”, he said they had learned several lessons that he hoped would serve them in good stead against New Zealand.

“Firstly, we can’t control Mother Nature. It’s just unfortunate that we couldn’t get in two solid games of cricket to give ourselves a chance to get back in the series, but we still have to see the importance of playing every single moment that we get, because we didn’t know what was going to happen today or the previous ODI.

“We will take the learnings from the first game, and I still must give credit to the guys when they did well. I think the bowlers hit the straps especially in the first powerplay, and it’s an area that we fell down in the last couple of years so it’s good to see we can pick some positives from that first ODI,” Hope said.

“Hopefully, we can take those learnings into the New Zealand series. It’s unfortunate we couldn’t get in two solid games to make it a series win for us, but we can’t control the weather.”

CMC