NORTH SOUND, An­tigua – Strike bowler Alzarri Joseph said it will be “busi­ness as usu­al” when he takes up the new role of West In­dies vice-cap­tain for the three One-day In­ter­na­tion­als against Eng­land, start­ing on Sun­day in his home­land of An­tigua.

The 27-year-old An­tiguan fast bowler was el­e­vat­ed to the po­si­tion af­ter lead­ing the Lee­ward Is­lands Hur­ri­canes to the fi­nal of the West In­dies Su­per50 Cup last month, which was won by hosts Trinidad & To­ba­go Red Force.

“My role on the field does not nec­es­sar­i­ly change, but in terms of the vice-cap­tain­cy, I think it’s some­thing that I’ll cher­ish for a lit­tle,” Joseph told CWI Me­dia.

“For me, it will be about fa­cil­i­tat­ing the cap­tain as much as I can and shar­ing my ad­vice and see­ing how well I can work with him to make the team a lot more suc­cess­ful.”

Joseph said lead­ing the Hur­ri­canes was an eye-open­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, but he had plen­ty of help from the se­nior play­ers, which al­so made his job as the lead fast bowler much eas­i­er.

“It was good,” he said. “I had a lot of guys around me that had cap­tained be­fore, so they helped me to play that role as ef­fi­cient­ly as I can, but I al­so had my own phi­los­o­phy that I want­ed to bring to the team, and the guys re­al­ly bought in to it.

“Once you are a bowler, you are your own cap­tain when you have the ball, so for me, it was just about do­ing my job and ask­ing the rest of the guys to back me up. When I was not bowl­ing, I had to make sure that every­one else was on the right path and ex­e­cut­ing our plans.”

West In­dies failed to qual­i­fy for the ICC Men’s ODI World Cup that Aus­tralia won last month in In­dia, and Eng­land, the pre­vi­ous cham­pi­ons, per­formed dis­mal­ly, win­ning on­ly two of their nine match­es, and ex­it­ed the tour­na­ment af­ter the pre­lim­i­nary stage.

Against this back­drop that the two sides will face each oth­er look­ing for re­demp­tion and chart­ing a new course in this for­mat of the sport.

“I think it’s go­ing to be a re­al­ly good se­ries,” Joseph said. “We have been prepar­ing very well. We are ready, and I think it will be quite en­ter­tain­ing.

“It’s al­ways spe­cial play­ing on home soil, so I am look­ing for­ward to the match­es in An­tigua, but noth­ing changes, it’s busi­ness as usu­al. For me, it’s about go­ing out on­to the field and per­form­ing my role as ef­fi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble.”

Joseph, a mem­ber of the West In­dies Un­der-19 side that won the ICC Youth World Cup un­der the lead­er­ship of Shim­ron Het­my­er and men­tor­ship of Eng­lish coach Graeme West, now has 104 wick­ets at 27.69 apiece from 63 ODIs since mak­ing his de­but against Pak­istan sev­en years ago in Shar­jah.

The soft-spo­ken Joseph was philo­soph­i­cal about reach­ing the mile­stone and be­com­ing the en­forcer in the at­tack.

“It’s al­ways good to get to those mile­stones, but the job is not done yet, and there is still a long way to go, so for me, it’s just about get­ting one per cent bet­ter every day,” he said.

The first two ODIs on Sun­day and this com­ing Wednes­day will be played at the Vi­vian Richards Crick­et Ground in An­tigua, and the fi­nal match of the se­ries takes place the fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day at Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bar­ba­dos.

CMC