BRIDGETOWN – West In­dies vice-cap­tain Jomel War­ri­can isn’t heart­ened by the news that Aus­tralia will be with­out their world class bats­man Steve Smith when the open­ing Test match be­tween the two teams bowls off in Bar­ba­dos on Wednes­day.

News broke on Thurs­day that the 36-year-old Smith will miss the first Test at Kens­ing­ton Oval af­ter sus­tain­ing a fin­ger in­jury in the World Test Cham­pi­onship Fi­nal against South Africa last week.

How­ev­er, it is hoped that Smith, who av­er­ages a re­mark­able 56.55 in 117 Test match­es, in­clu­sive of 36 cen­turies and 42 half-cen­turies, will be fit to play in the sec­ond match that starts in Grena­da from Ju­ly 3.

Josh In­glis and Sam Kon­stas have been named as re­place­ments for Smith and Mar­nus Labuschagne, who has been dropped from the team.

Speak­ing to the me­dia fol­low­ing a train­ing ses­sion at Kens­ing­ton Oval on Thurs­day, War­ri­can said Aus­tralia, the num­ber one ranked Test team in the world, had a pletho­ra of qual­i­ty bats­men oth­er than Smith.

He said even in Smith’s ab­sence, the eighth-ranked West In­dies would still have their work cut out.

“You still have to take every play­er se­ri­ous­ly, so yes while Steve Smith will be a big miss for Aus­tralia, we have to make sure that we take every bats­man or who­ev­er re­places him just as se­ri­ous as him,” War­ri­can said.

The left-arm spin­ner said prepa­ra­tions for the up­com­ing se­ries, which marks the start of the World Test Cham­pi­onship 2027 cy­cle, had been go­ing smooth­ly.

He said with Aus­tralia ex­pect­ed to re­ly heav­i­ly on pace, the bats­men had been pay­ing spe­cial fo­cus to play­ing fast bowl­ing.

“The guys are putting in their work and we’re work­ing ex­treme­ly hard as a unit.

“We have the white-ball guys that have now joined the team so we’re gelling well as a unit and we’re work­ing on our skills whether it be bat­ting, bowl­ing or field­ing,” War­ri­can said.

“We’ve been go­ing through some match sce­nar­ios as close as pos­si­ble to the game, so bat­ting two new balls and against seam con­sis­tent­ly. We know that Aus­tralia will be com­ing with a lot of pace against us, so the guys have been prepar­ing for that very well.”

CMC