The West Indies captain Darren Sammy invested Friday’s ICC World Twenty20 semifinal with the hopes of the entire Caribbean archipelago while Australian skipper George Bailey spoke of playing with freedom during the course of their respective media interactions here on Thursday.
Excerpts
Sammy’s strategies
The big game: Once we play to our full potential, once everybody clicks as a team, we will be a destructive force.
We know that in the dressing room and we are quite confident we can go out and do that in the semifinals.
The motto when we left the Caribbean was: One Team, One people, One Goal. The mission is to win the Twenty20 World Cup and we saw it as a 100m hurdle. We got two more hurdles to jump to reach the finish line.
Not just about Gayle: Obviously he sets the momentum for us at the top of the order, but to win the game it will take a total team effort. I think it will take a collective effort like you saw in the games before to win the semifinal.
Olympic high: The Caribbean success in the Olympics was definitely mentioned in our preparation.
I remember the coach (Ottis Gibson) giving a speech at one of the meetings before the World Cup.
I remember being in Jamaica watching the men’s and women’s 100m and 400m finals and it felt like the entire Caribbean was winning.
Bailey’s forecast
All about flair: The other night (against Pakistan) we were tentative. So we will go out and play the way we do, throw caution to the wind and if that is still not good enough, then we are not good enough.
The Gayle impact: If he has an outstanding game he will make it difficult for us, but we can come back through Watson, Warner and Hussey.
In Twenty20 we have these games within games.
Bat first or chase: In knockout games, maybe it is tradition, you prefer to have runs on the board and put the pressure on the other side. That’s something that we weigh up but I don’t think it affects us too much in what we do.
David Hussey in the final eleven: Yes, we are weighing that. That’s probably the only change.
