ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Cap­tain of the Wind­ward Is­lands Vol­ca­noes, Al­ick Athanaze has called on his bats­men to turn up to the par­ty for the re­main­ing four rounds of the West In­dies Cham­pi­onship.

The Vol­ca­noes are cur­rent­ly lan­guish­ing in sixth po­si­tion on 16.8 points fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of three round of com­pe­ti­tion.

In a dis­ap­point­ing per­for­mance thus far, they lost their open­ing round match to the Ja­maica Scor­pi­ons, were crushed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Force the en­su­ing round, while their third-round en­counter against the Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges end­ed in a draw.

How­ev­er, Athanaze is con­fi­dent the Vol­ca­noes can turn their sea­son around fol­low­ing a three-week break, when they come up against the Lee­ward Is­lands Hur­ri­canes on March 5.

He ad­mit­ted that the side was miss­ing some key play­ers, in­clud­ing him­self, due to West In­dies du­ty.

“We weren’t at full strength to be hon­est. I was away, Springer was away and some of the oth­er guys were away. I think it gives the guys some con­fi­dence that we came in,” Athanaze said dur­ing a re­cent CWI me­dia in­ter­ac­tion.

“We just need to be a bit more con­sis­tent and put some big­ger to­tals on the board and, I guess, giv­en that the con­di­tion of the ball doesn’t do much for the pac­ers, set more de­cent plans for our spin­ners, be more con­sis­tent and take what­ev­er chances come to us.

“We can’t af­ford to slip away, be­cause we’re ba­si­cal­ly halfway through the sea­son al­ready but, like I said, we’re com­ing back and, hope­ful­ly, the guys that came back from in­jury and West In­dies du­ty can stand up,” he added.

CMC