Pollard: It’s cricket, someone has to win or lose

COLIN BENJAMIN

The TT Red Force remain keen to stamp their authority on the remainder of the CWI Super50 2018 heading into the knockout phase in Barbados according to Kieron Pollard, following the teams 75-run loss to Guyana Jaguars, on Saturday evening, at Brian Lara Stadium, Tarouba.

Pollard, who spoke with the media instead of captain Denesh Ramdin, addressed what he felt the team did wrong versus Guyana and his own poor personal form in the ongoing Super 50, following an excellent Caribbean Premier League of 330 runs at 47.14 to earn a recall for the West Indies T20 team to India next month.

In the Super 50 he has so far scored: 0, 20, 3, 30, 0.

“It’s a game of cricket, Guyana batted pretty well on the wicket. Kudos must go to them”, said Pollard “Trevon (Griffith) came out and batted positively, which is a good sign as young Caribbean opening batsman, so too Barnwell (Christopher), then Reifer (Raymond) came in and their overall contributions helped them to get that total. “On a next day, we could have chased it down. We only lost it when that guy Pestano (Clinton) claimed the three wickets in one over and that’s what changed the entire momentum of game.

“When you lose three wickets in succession, one set guy in Simmons (Lendl) and obviously Bravo and myself, I think that is where we lost it. But again it’s a game of cricket, someone has to win or lose. We are on the losing side, but that doesn’t make us a bad team, we still have four wins and one more to get us to Barbados.” Observers were critical and questioned some of the tactical decisions during the Red Force’s chase such as: Ramdin opening and the inform Pooran batting at a low number seven.

“No, we definitely want to win all our games, in that dressing room, the vision is about trying to continue to stamp our authority on the tournament.

“I have been short of runs for the team, it’s something I don’t need no introduction to and don’t need everyone telling me I’m not scoring, these things happen in sport, it just about one innings to turn it around.

“But this (scoring) becomes more important in these tournaments when it comes to knockout stage matches and of course, with me going off to India, so (it) will be good to get some runs under my belt

Before the tournament Pollard, the Bravo brothers and Sunil Narine came to an understanding with Cricket West Indies CEO and director of cricket Johnny Grave and Jimmy Adams respectively to play in Super50 tournament, per board policy to get selected on the ODI team again looking ahead to 2019 Cricket World Cup.

While the board decided to promote young Fabian Allen and Oshane Thomas based on tCPL T20 form to the ODI team but not Pollard, the 31-year- old was happy with the call-up nevertheless.

“Always good to go play in India, we West Indians are loved there, and hopefully we can go there and make a difference. It hasn’t been good going for our Test team at the moment but, there is still five ODIs to play so let’s see.”