As West Indies gear up for a challenging tour of India, their head coach Darren Sammy wants to draw inspiration from New Zealand, which blanked the hosts 3-0 against all odds last year. The former T20 World Cup winning captain, who has been the coach of the West Indies outfit across all formats, has called on the team to prepare with the belief that they can beat India in India.
Since winning the third Test of the 1994 tour at Mohali, West Indies haven’t won a Test in India, losing seven of the nine Tests in these parts. One Test match that ended in a draw had scores level in the second innings at the Wankhede stadium in 2011. Given the odds, India definitely start as favourites and Sammy cited the example of New Zealand.
“We’re definitely going down there with the mindset to win. We’re not just going to go down there and think, ‘oh, it’s India’. No. New Zealand went there and did incredibly well and that we should take inspiration from. But again, it’s understanding the things that New Zealand did in those conditions and try to emulate it with our guys as well,” Sammy said.
Post the Caribbean Premier League this weekend, the West Indies will fly out to India and Sammy said the preparation in Indian conditions would be critical. Like most visiting teams they head straight into the Test series without playing any practice fixtures. “From my end, the ten days leading up to the [first] Test match [in India], we’ll be drilling in all these things and planning very well as to how we’re going to beat India in India,” Sammy added.
In each of their previous tours to India in this century, West Indies have come up short against the Indian spinners. Apart from the Eden Gardens Test in 2002, they haven’t come close to stretching India in any of the remaining 8 Tests, losing 5 by an innings and one by a 10-wicket margin. Given that history, the magnitude of the challenge that lies of West Indies is huge as India, which is without a Test series win for 12 months is expected to return to winning ways.
