(Sportsmax) – The West Indies can win in England this summer, so says their Test captain, Jason Holder.
The skipper believes his team, having experienced English conditions in a heavy defeat in 2017, have the experience to make restitution for that earlier performance.
The West Indies are scheduled to play three Tests in England, beginning June 1, but there isn’t a lot of hope that it won’t, at the very least, be postponed because of the government’s directives to combat the spread of COVID-19 in that country.
The England Cricket Board and Cricket West Indies have had preliminary discussions and should be meeting again on Sunday to decide a way forward, with the possibility of playing to empty stands, postponements or both still on the cards.
Before the series, the West Indies were to have played three warm-up matches with a camp at the Rose Bowl in Hampshire, but that is also not expected to happen, at least not in the same way or maybe even at the same time.
Holder though, is hopeful that the series will go on.
While the series in England was destructive to the West Indian confidence, last year in the Caribbean, the West Indies had bested England 2-1 in a series that showed they could, not just compete, but hurt the generations-long rivals.
“This series will be tougher than the one in the Caribbean because we are obviously going in their backyard. England are a very, very good team in their backyard. Even although we beat them in the last series I’ll still say England will start as favourites,” said Holder.
According to Holder though, the West Indies aren’t the inexperienced bunch England would have played three years ago when they lost 2-1.
“You’ve got guys like Kraigg Brathwaite who has played county cricket as well and international cricket there. Shai [Hope] has played enough international cricket and did really well as well. So we have some guys going back there with a vengeance.
“If you speak to a lot of guys who were on that tour in 2017 everybody will say they can’t wait to go back and probably just make amends for what would’ve happened in 2017. We believed personally in our abilities, it is just a matter of understanding the conditions and now that we’ve had that experience, I should only hope that we should be able to then put into practice and make a better show than we did last time,” said Holder.
