CEN­TU­RI­ON – West In­dies will hope to sal­vage some­thing from the tour of South Africa when they face the hosts in the open­ing Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al of the three-match se­ries in South Africa on Sat­ur­day.

The Caribbean side were swept aside 2-0 in the two-Test se­ries and drew the three-match One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al 1-1 af­ter the open­ing game was rained off.

Rov­man Pow­ell, the new­ly ap­point­ed T20I skip­per, said the squad was “in a good space” and were op­ti­mistic of a pos­i­tive re­sult in the se­ries.

“I think we are very, very pre­pared. The guys are in a very good space,” Pow­ell told me­dia here Fri­day ahead of the con­test at Su­per­sport Park.

“We have a train­ing ses­sion to­day and we have spent some time over the last few days just try­ing to get things right, so from that stand­point the guys are in a very good space.”

He con­tin­ued: “Every­one in the squad is avail­able for se­lec­tion and rar­ing to go. As a se­lec­tion group, we will meet lat­er to­day in­to to­mor­row just to fi­nalise the fi­nal XI or the fi­nal 13 we will use for this game but every­one is avail­able and ready to go.”

Sev­er­al play­ers who fea­tured in the ODI se­ries have made the crossover to the T20 side, the likes of all-rounders Kyle May­ers and Ja­son Hold­er, bats­men Bran­don King and Shamarh Brooks and fast bowler Alzarri Joseph all part of the squad.

May­ers, Hold­er and Joseph were al­so mem­bers of the Test squad, and Pow­ell said their knowl­edge of con­di­tions will be crit­i­cal es­pe­cial­ly for those play­ers on­ly in South Africa for the T20 phase of the tour.

“Guys that have been on the whole tour it is im­por­tant for them to feed us with in­for­ma­tion – guys who haven’t been on the whole tour,” Pow­ell ex­plained.

“It’s now for us the guys who have been here for the short­er pe­ri­od just to ad­just and ad­just fast. It’s good that the con­di­tions here aren’t a lot dif­fer­ent from the Caribbean – the wick­ets are gen­er­al­ly good, good for crick­et. Hope­ful­ly we can bring our skills to all three games.”

West In­dies have had mixed re­sults against the Pro­teas in re­cent years, los­ing their last se­ries in the Caribbean 3-2 but win­ning 2-1 in a three-match se­ries here eight years ago.

South Africa, who will be led by new cap­tain Aiden Markram, will boast the likes of big-hit­ting left-han­ders Quin­ton de Kock and David Miller, along with the dan­ger­ous pace trio of Kag­iso Raba­da, An­rich Nort­je and Lun­gi Ngi­di.

And Pow­ell said West In­dies were in the process of fine-tun­ing their plans as they looked to stop South Africa’s jug­ger­naut.

“Guys are now com­ing up with plans for dif­fer­ent play­ers,” Pow­ell said.

“I can’t sit here and say what are the ex­act plans but def­i­nite­ly as a team we have to pre­pare and I think over the last few days we have done some good prepa­ra­tion.”

The game bowls off at 2 pm (8 am East­ern Caribbean time)

CMC

SQUADS:

SOUTH AFRICA – Aaiden Markram (cap­tain), Quin­ton de Kock, Bjorn For­tu­in, Reeza Hen­dricks, Mar­co Jansen, Hein­rich Klaasen, Sisan­da Ma­g­a­la, David Miller, Lun­gi Ngi­di, An­rich Nort­je, Wayne Par­nell, Kag­iso Raba­da, Rilee Rossouw, Tabraiz Sham­si, Tris­tan Stubbs.

WEST IN­DIES – Rov­man Pow­ell (cap­tain), Kyle May­ers, Shamarh Brooks, Yan­nic Cari­ah, John­son Charles, Ros­ton Chase, Shel­don Cot­trell, Ja­son Hold­er, Akeal Ho­sein, Alzarri Joseph, Bran­don King, Nicholas Pooran, Ray­mon Reifer, Ro­mario Shep­herd, Odean Smith.