ST JOHN’S, An­tigua De­spite hav­ing a dom­i­nant Test record against Bangladesh at home, West In­dies Test cap­tain Kraigg Brath­waite has giv­en the as­sur­ance that his side will not un­der­es­ti­mate the vis­i­tors in their two-match se­ries start­ing on Fri­day.

Bangladesh last won a Test se­ries in the Caribbean 15 years ago, with the Windies hav­ing swept the last two Test se­ries against them 2-0.

How­ev­er, speak­ing dur­ing a pre-match press con­fer­ence on Thurs­day, Brath­waite said his­to­ry would not dic­tate the out­come of the se­ries.

“Every­thing that is gone is his­to­ry. We are play­ing against a tal­ent­ed Bangladesh team. What is gone is gone, and ob­vi­ous­ly we have to come to­mor­row and start well in what­ev­er we do.

“We’re play­ing against a tal­ent­ed Bangladesh team, and it won’t be easy. The per­for­mances be­fore are gone, so we have to come ready to go to­mor­row morn­ing,” Brath­waite in­sist­ed.

He ad­mit­ted that while 2024 had not been smooth sail­ing for the West In­dies in Tests, he said the mood in the camp was still very good.

Brath­waite said there was still much left to play for, es­pe­cial­ly with cru­cial points go­ing to­wards the World Test Cham­pi­onship.

The skip­per al­so point­ed out that he ex­pect­ed his bat­ters to come good in this se­ries, es­pe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that sev­er­al of them had per­formed well in the on­go­ing Re­gion­al Su­per50 com­pe­ti­tion.

“We’ve been hav­ing a dif­fi­cult year thus far, but we had some good per­for­mances with the bat, and it’s just to draw from them as much as pos­si­ble. We have four in­nings here, and it’s just to back your plans 100 per­cent,” Brath­waite said.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly we looked at the points as a team, and we know that we have four games left in this cy­cle and we can still pret­ty much come high up in the ta­ble, but we just have to be­lieve.

“I think the bat­ters are in a good space. A few of the guys would have played in the Su­per50 and got some scores, so that was good to see, and it’s just all about that be­lief,” he added.

Mean­while, Bangladesh stand-in cap­tain, Mehidy Hasan Mi­raz, said de­spite miss­ing some key play­ers for the se­ries, he ex­pect­ed the team to give a good ac­count of them­selves.

“We are prac­tic­ing a lot, and we have been work­ing hard the past few days... We are think­ing pos­i­tive­ly all the time, and we are fo­cus­ing on our game.

“We are miss­ing some se­nior play­ers. It’s been tough, but we still be­lieve that we can be bet­ter. We have a good side right now; young play­ers are com­ing up, and they have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to per­form in these con­di­tions,” he said.

“We be­lieve that we can play well and we can come out strong­ly.”

(CMC)