Vin­ode Mam­chan

The 2010 In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) T20 World Cup opens to­day and West In­dies will be go­ing in­to their clash against Ire­land, with fit­ness clouds hang­ing over three of their play­ers. Skip­per Chris Gayle re­vealed at the pre match press con­fer­ence at the Pe­ga­sus Ho­tel yes­ter­day his team is on the back­foot at present. "Cur­rent­ly we are on the back­foot, as we have in­jury con­cerns with three of our play­ers. Sulie­mann Benn picked up a shoul­der in­jury in the warm-up match and he is strug­gling at the mo­ment. Wavell Hinds has twist­ed his an­kle and Jerome Tay­lor is still not up to scratch with his in­jured shoul­der."

A fourth play­er, Trinida­di­an Ke­iron Pol­lard has the flu, but will take his place in the side for to­day's 5 pm clash. Gayle said any body can win the T20 World Cup and de­spite the West In­dies los­ing their warm-up against New Zealand, his team should be one of the favourites. "We are un­der pres­sure to de­liv­er, we are at home and we need to per­form and there should be no ex­cus­es. I don't see why we can't be in­stalled as one of the favourites. The host na­tion have nev­er won the tour­na­ment and we have the pow­er to do that." Gayle sound­ed frus­trat­ed when he spoke of his team's bat­ting. "We are deal­ing with this, and I would like to give the guys the ben­e­fit of the doubt. I have spo­ken to them and they need to step up. We have match win­ners and they must have the self be­lief to do the job.

He said the nar­row 7-run loss to New Zealand in Wednes­day's warm-up was not good. "We got a good start, my­self and Shiv laid the foun­da­tion and it was tak­en for grant­ed and we lost. That's not the start we want­ed lead­ing up to the Ire­land game, the bowlers pulled to­geth­er but the bat­ting failed us." Gayle said giv­en the re­duced tick­et prices for this year's tour­na­ment, he is hop­ing for a good turn out. "The tour­na­ment will be dif­fer­ent from the last World Cup and we are hop­ing for a good turn out. We al­ways get the sup­port in Guyana and we are look­ing for­ward to play­ing in front of a packed house." Gayle said the pitch played well and helped the spin­ners. He al­so sug­gest­ed he would be bowl­ing in the tour­na­ment, al­though he did not bowl in the warm-up. "It is con­fus­ing as cap­tain, every­thing goes on so fast and you are di­rect­ing things but you would get some bowl­ing from me. In this short­er ver­sion I think that I can con­tribute with the ball."

Ire­land coach Phil Sim­mons al­so gave his team a lec­ture af­ter their loss to Afghanistan on Wednes­day. "We did not play well against Afghanistan, the bats­men give the bowlers some­thing to work with but they were not good on the day and they need to pick up the pieces quick­ly in or­der to have a chance against the West In­dies." Ire­land knocked out Pak­istan at the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean and al­so de­feat­ed Bangladesh in last year's T20 World Cup in Eng­land. Sim­mons said don't rule out an­oth­er up­set. "I think it's eas­i­er to pull off a shock in T20 be­cause re­cov­ery time is less than in 50 overs. We have played that lit­tle bit more T20 than we had go­ing in­to the last World Cup - so we are slight­ly wis­er about T20 crick­et. That has to be a good thing."

Teams

West In­dies:

Chris Gayle (capt), Sulie­man Benn, Dwayne Bra­vo, Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul, Nars­ingh De­onar­ine, An­dre Fletch­er, Wavell Hinds, Niki­ta Miller, Kieron Pol­lard, De­nesh Ramdin, Ravi Ram­paul, Ke­mar Roach, Dar­ren Sam­my, Ramnaresh Sar­wan and Jerome Tay­lor. Coach: Ot­tis Gib­son.

Ire­land:

William Porter­field (capt), An­dre Botha, Pe­ter Con­nell, Alex Cu­sack, George Dock­rell, Trent John­ston, Nigel Jones, Gary Kidd, John Mooney, Kevin O'Brien, Niall O'Brien, Boyd Rankin, Paul Stir­ling, An­drew White and Gary Wil­son. Coach: Phil Sim­mons.