The com­mand­ing vic­to­ry of the West In­dies over Ugan­da in their lat­est ICC T20 World Cup match was es­sen­tial­ly due to the per­for­mance of Akeal Ho­sein. It was a sig­nif­i­cant ac­com­plish­ment for the left-arm or­tho­dox bowler to re­turn fig­ures of 5 for 11 in his four-over spell. He con­fused com­plete­ly the Ugan­dan bat­ters with his drift-in to them and spin-away and with the straight de­liv­ery slid­ing through the air and then head­ing for the mid­dle stump.

That he got three LBW de­ci­sions and two bat­ters bowled with straight de­liv­er­ies tell the sto­ry of his ac­cu­ra­cy. His ma­tu­ri­ty and bold ap­proach are en­cour­ag­ing and just re­ward for the ob­vi­ous se­ri­ous­ness with which he takes his craft.

As im­por­tant as Ho­sein’s skill­ful per­for­mance, the West In­dies in the warm-up games against South Africa and Aus­tralia and in the first and sec­ond of­fi­cial games of the tour­na­ment against Papua New Guinea and now Ugan­da had about them a team with a sense of mis­sion.

That ap­proach can on­ly be ex­pect­ed un­der the com­mit­ted in­spi­ra­tion of coach Dar­ren Sam­my, with team cap­tain Rov­man Pow­ell lead­ing well. There were a few stum­bles in the Papua New Guinea match and a fall away in the last ten overs against the steady but un­spec­tac­u­lar bowl­ing by the in­ex­pe­ri­enced Ugan­dans; but in the end, the West In­dies es­tab­lished them­selves as a se­nior team against the new­com­ers.

How­ev­er, the coach and team must sure­ly know that from here on, start­ing on Wednes­day against New Zealand and then against Afghanistan, all tri­al and er­ror must come to an end. New Zealand, al­ready hum­bled by the Afghans and not able to lose an­oth­er match in this qual­i­fy­ing round, will be in­tent on not risk­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of elim­i­na­tion.

As we have all come to know, the Ki­wis are one of the ma­jor teams in all forms of world crick­et and will not cede ground in such a cru­cial game. The re­quire­ment then, will then be for the Windies to lift their game sig­nif­i­cant­ly and not ex­pect New Zealand to per­form be­low par again.

The room for im­prove­ment in the West In­di­an game starts with one of its strongest play­ers, the mer­cu­r­ial Nico­las Pooran, who has been the top per­former with the bat over the last two years. Too of­ten though, Pooran be­comes over-con­fi­dent and a bit ar­ro­gant and gives away his wick­et. It is al­so wor­ry­ing the over-de­pen­dence he places on the pull shot over mid-on and mid-wick­et and suc­cumbs, as he did against Ugan­da, when well set and ca­pa­ble of get­ting far more runs.

Oth­er bat­ters up the or­der, in­clud­ing open­er Bran­don King, Pow­ell him­self and when he plays, Shim­ron Het­mey­er, must know they are crit­i­cal to the team mak­ing a big score or chas­ing one. The bowlers, in ad­di­tion to Ho­sein, have been per­form­ing just about ad­e­quate­ly. In the fi­nal two games of this round against tougher op­po­si­tion, they must be con­sis­tent.

Up to this point, the young Shamar Joseph, who raised great ex­pec­ta­tions in the re­cent Test se­ries against Aus­tralia, has not found the same kind of pen­e­tra­tive form to first en­sure him­self of se­lec­tion in the fi­nal XI and then earn his keep in the team.

At home on the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my ground in the up­com­ing match­es, there­fore, should be an ad­van­tage the team us­es.