The mem­bers of the Sagi­cor West In­dies High Per­for­mance Cen­tre will be fly­ing the flag of West In­dies Crick­et when they face Bermu­da to­day in the open­ing match of the Cana­da Crick­et Fes­ti­val. The Windies lads will have their first match against in­ter­na­tion­al op­po­si­tion in the 50-over con­test at the Mal­ton Sports and Crick­et Club in Mis­sis­sauga, On­tario. Yes­ter­day, the 14 play­ers had a full train­ing ses­sion un­der the su­per­vi­sion of Head Coach To­by Rad­ford, as they got ac­cli­ma­tised to the con­di­tions. The weath­er was ide­al for train­ing, but the con­di­tions are ex­pect­ed to get sig­nif­i­cant­ly cool­er on match-day. The pitch has no grass and ap­pears flat so the bowlers can ex­pect some hard work when play gets go­ing.

Court­ney Browne, the Sagi­cor West In­dies HPC wick­et-keep­ing coach and West In­dies Crick­et Board se­lec­tor, has ac­com­pa­nied the team on the tour. The for­mer Bar­ba­dos and West In­dies glove­man out­lined the tour is a de­vel­op­men­tal one and the play­ers will be us­ing the trip to con­tin­ue the hard work they did at the HPC head­quar­ters at the 3Ws Oval at the Cave Hill Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. "There is a re­al­ly good buzz among the guys and you can see they are re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to these match­es. They are very ex­cit­ed to get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be rep­re­sen­ta­tives of West In­dies crick­et. Some of them have had some in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence while it will be new for a few oth­ers. From look­ing at the train­ing and the prepa­ra­tion you can clear­ly see that every­one is ready," Browne said.

"This is a de­vel­op­men­tal tour. These are the first [play­ers] to be in­volved in the HPC and it is some­thing new in West In­dies crick­et. It deals specif­i­cal­ly with play­ers and their de­vel­op­ment as they seek to be­come pro­fes­sion­al crick­eters." Browne added: "All the play­ers are re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to im­ple­ment­ing a lot of the things they learned over three months in Bar­ba­dos and this is a great place and time to do it. We have qual­i­ty play­ers in all de­part­ments and these are some of the best young tal­ents in the West In­dies."

TEAMS

Sagi­cor West In­dies HPC: Shamarh Brooks (cap­tain), Ash­ley Nurse, Kier­an Pow­ell, Ra­jen­dra Chan­dri­ka, Kyle Corbin, Nkrumah Bon­ner, Keron Cot­toy, Ja­son Hold­er, De­lorn John­son, Veerasam­my Per­maul, Bran­don Bess, Shan­non Gabriel, De­von Thomas (wick­et-keep­er), Shane Dowrich (wick­et-keep­er).