When West In­dies pac­er Jerome Tay­lor re­turns to com­pet­i­tive crick­et Sat­ur­day it will be with the full ap­proval of his coach Ot­tis Gib­son. Tay­lor has been in­ac­tive since the tour of Aus­tralia last year when he limped out of the first Test af­ter bowl­ing nine overs in Bris­bane. Gib­son told a me­dia con­fer­ence Tues­day that the 25-year-old Ja­maican quick­ie im­pressed him with his work eth­ic dur­ing the re­cent ten-day camp here at the 3Ws Oval and would be read­ing for the up­com­ing World Twen­ty20 Cham­pi­onship in the Caribbean.

"There have been some is­sues about his fit­ness and hav­ing seen him last week and seen the lev­el that he is train­ing, I've giv­en him a 'back to bowl­ing pro­gramme,'" said Gib­son, a for­mer West In­dies fast bowler. Gib­son added that with Tay­lor's work eth­ic, once he keeps on track he be­lieved he would be match fit by their open­ing T20 match of the April 30 to May 16 tour­na­ment. "Once he fol­lows the pro­gramme, I am pret­ty con­fi­dent that when we get to Guyana for the first game, we won't have any is­sues with re­gards to his fit­ness," he as­sert­ed.

Tay­lor, the spear­head of the Windies at­tack when fit, has had a trou­bled his­to­ry of in­jury and has of­ten strug­gled for fit­ness. Gib­son, who played two Tests and 15 One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als, cau­tioned Tay­lor to tem­per his en­thu­si­asm to en­sure his re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion is grad­ual. "He needs to still take it a lit­tle bit easy at the mo­ment but lead­ing up to this pe­ri­od go­ing in­to Ja­maica now and lead­ing in­to Guyana, I am pret­ty sure that he'll be fine to play the first game," Gib­son said. Tay­lor's first taste of com­pet­i­tive crick­et in al­most four months will be on home soil when West In­dies face Cana­da in the Ja­maica Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion fes­ti­val on Sat­ur­day. CMC