ICC World Twenty20 2010 in the West Indies
ON this week’s ICC Cricket World special edition audio show Ireland coach Phil Simmons is joined by Scotland’s Gavin Hamilton and USA coach Clayton Lambert to talk about the Associate and Affiliate sides’ prospects ahead of the ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier 2010 to be played in the United Arab Emirates from February 9 to 13. Simmons, who has coached the Ireland side since 2007, says his team is rebuilding after the ICC World Twenty20 in England last year but hopes it will qualify for what would be its second World Twenty20 tournament.
“We hope to make a few new discoveries during this tournament since we’ve lost three bowlers since the ICC World Twenty20 in England last year. Kyle McCallum has retired and two other bowlers in Regan West and Boyd Rankin are both out injured,” he said.
Simmons also spoke of his side’s group which features Afghanistan, USA and Scotland: “All the matches in our group are going to be hard, like all Twenty20 cricket. We have to take every game seriously and play every game to win and hopefully we can finish the tournament without losing a match.”
Scotland captain Gavin Hamilton says of Saltires’ chances of heading to what would be its third consecutive ICC World Twenty20: “This current side is a pretty inexperienced one when it comes to Twenty20 cricket since we’ve only had the opportunity to play Twenty20 in high-profile competitions like this one and the main ICC World Twenty20.
“But some of the team have been out practising in Pretoria ahead of the tournament and also we’ll have played in Kenya in a quadrangular tournament so we’ll give the qualifier our best shot.”
The USA is the third side in Group A and its coach Clayton Lambert says: “We had a camp in November and trial matches and we had a very good talent pool of 35 players to choose from and it was our job to pick the team of 14 players whom we’ve bought to the UAE.”
“It would be sad if we went there and thought we couldn’t win and qualify for the ICC World Twenty20 in the West Indies. The other teams are more experienced but we have some really talented players and once the team play as a unit we play some really good cricket.”
Apart from the above interviews, this week’s ICC Cricket World also includes a preview of the upcoming South Africa tour of India, round-up of the last seven days in cricket and an update on the Reliance Mobile ICC Player Rankings.