Important trip to South Africa for A team, Coley says

Source: Trinidad Guardian

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos - Head coach An­dre Co­ley said the West In­dies A team tour of South Africa was im­por­tant to defin­ing and de­vel­op­ing the depth of tal­ent in the longer for­mats of the sport in the Caribbean.

The team, led by wick­et­keep­er-bats­man Joshua Da Sil­va, de­part­ed from Bar­ba­dos on Tues­day for a trip on which they will play three "Tests" against South Africa A be­tween No­vem­ber 21 and De­cem­ber 8 in Benoni, East Lon­don, and Bloem­fontein.

"It will give us an op­por­tu­ni­ty to boost our red-ball op­por­tu­ni­ties out­side of the Caribbean," Co­ley said in an in­ter­view with CWI Me­dia. "Ear­li­er this year, we went to Bangladesh, and we did well there, and now we are go­ing to an­oth­er part of the world - South Africa.

"It will give us an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plore the brand of crick­et that we want to play. Our next in­ter­na­tion­al as­sign­ment is in Aus­tralia, and six months af­ter that we go to Eng­land, so this A team is po­si­tioned to of­fer red-ball play­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties on the back of the just-con­clud­ed Su­per50 Cup."

Co­ley is al­so head coach of the West In­dies se­nior Test side, and he ac­com­pa­nied Kraigg Brath­waite's squad on their tour last year to face the Pro­teas un­der Tem­ba Bavu­ma, so this will be his sec­ond trip to South Africa in a year.

"The South Africans are a team that want to play a spe­cif­ic way, and they al­ways look to chal­lenge you, but they re­spect our play­ers," Co­ley said. "The pitch­es have of­fered pace, have of­fered bounce, so you will have pitch­es on which you can trust the bounce.

"Play­ers can, there­fore, ex­press them­selves, whether they are bat­ting or bowl­ing, but it has nev­er re­al­ly been a place where the spin­ners have ex­celled, so it's al­so an op­por­tu­ni­ty for our spin­ners to learn to be ef­fec­tive in those con­di­tions, and I am look­ing for­ward to be­ing there."

Co­ley, a for­mer Ja­maica wick­et­keep­er-bats­man, said the main ob­jec­tive was to come away from the trip with wins un­der the team's belt, but there were oth­er goals that will be equal­ly im­por­tant for the de­vel­op­ment of the West In­dies squad.

"You learn to win over time," he said. "We want to see our pri­ma­ry bats­man scor­ing loads of runs, as well as the all-rounders and bowlers av­er­ag­ing above 20 or 30 and build­ing low­er or­der part­ner­ships, that will help to ex­pand our bat­ting op­tions," he said.

"Once we are able to tick the box­es that we have agreed up­on, 75 per cent or more of what we have aimed for, that will help to de­fine suc­cess."

Tevin Im­lach was named the vice cap­tain of the squad, which in­clude five play­ers with se­nior Test ex­pe­ri­ence - Da Sil­va, left-han­ders Tage­nar­ine Chan­der­paul and Kirk McKen­zie, and fast bowlers Jay­den Seales and Sher­mon Lewis.

Three played that made their first-class de­buts this year were al­so named in the squad - bats­man Kevlon An­der­son, fast bowler and fel­low Guyanese Shamar Joseph, and spin bowl­ing all-rounder Ab­hi­jai Mans­ingh.

For­mer Ja­maica left-han­der and West In­dies cap­tain Jim­my Adams, the for­mer Crick­et West In­dies di­rec­tor of crick­et, and for­mer Aus­tralia fast bowler Shaun Tait are the as­sis­tant coach­es.