CAS­TRIES, St Lu­cia – De­spite be­ing thor­ough­ly out­played by Eng­land in the first two T20 in­ter­na­tion­als, West In­dies’ white-ball head coach Daren Sam­my be­lieves the home side has the nec­es­sary man­pow­er to pull off a come­back vic­to­ry in the fi­nal three match­es.

Eng­land leads the best-of-five se­ries 2-0 af­ter reg­is­ter­ing em­phat­ic eight-wick­et and sev­en-wick­et vic­to­ries re­spec­tive­ly over the Windies at Kens­ing­ton Oval on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day.

It means the West In­dies will have to win the re­main­ing three match­es, the first of which bowls off at the Daren Sam­my Crick­et Ground in St Lu­cia on Thurs­day.

When asked if he felt the West In­dies had the abil­i­ty to pull off the her­culean task, Sam­my said he ful­ly be­lieved they could.

“Most def­i­nite­ly, es­pe­cial­ly here in St Lu­cia. Yes, Eng­land has played bet­ter crick­et than us in the first two games, but I’ve ral­lied St Lu­cia to come out and be that ex­tra 12th man that we need here.

“The guys have just not played the brand of crick­et that has al­lowed us to win, and it is some­thing that we are go­ing to ad­dress, but we have the man­pow­er with­in that dress­ing room to win on Thurs­day and take it one game at a time,” Sam­my said.

The West In­dies will have to do with­out the ser­vices of ex­plo­sive all-rounder An­dre Rus­sell, who has been ruled out of the se­ries with an an­kle in­jury, which he sus­tained in Sat­ur­day’s open­ing T20I.

How­ev­er, they will have the ser­vices of lead­ing fast bowler Alzarri Joseph, who has been named in the squad af­ter serv­ing a two-game sus­pen­sion.

Sam­my ad­mit­ted that while Rus­sell’s ab­sence would be a tough loss, he said Shamar Springer, who has been named as his re­place­ment, had the tools to get the job done.

“It’s al­ways a blow to re­place some­one like An­dre Rus­sell, very ex­pe­ri­enced, brings two as­sets in bowl­ing and bat­ting and al­so with his field­ing, so it’s al­ways hard to re­place him,” Sam­my said.

“We have young Shamar Springer who made his de­but in Sri Lan­ka to re­place him, an ex­cit­ing, young prospect.

“Shamar [Joseph] is go­ing and get ready for the Test se­ries and ob­vi­ous­ly Alzarri Joseph is back from his sus­pen­sion, and we are look­ing for­ward to wel­com­ing him and the ex­pe­ri­ence he brings in this squad.

“Yes, we lost two key guys, but we get two guys who are ca­pa­ble of do­ing the job for the team,” the head coach added.

CMC