Dwayne Bravo misses out again ! Trinidad Guardian

The West Indies cricket team, trailing 0–1 in the current Test series against New Zealand, will have to do without the services of allrounder Dwayne Bravo after he again damaged his hamstring and will be out for up to a month. Bravo was called up for a preparatory camp to prepare for the current series in Barbados. The right-hander took active part in the camp but was declared not fit enough to take on the rigours of a five-day Test match. He was expected to be in the fray for the second Test that begins on Monday at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain but re-injured his hamstring and will now not be available to make his much anticipated return to Test cricket.

Meanwhile, the West Indies team for the second Test flew into Trinidad last night and today, will begin preparations for the second Test. The Caribbean boys went under to the Kiwis by 186 runs in the opening match of the series at Sabina Park in Jamaica on Wednesday, the fourth day of the Test. Skipper Denesh Ramdin lost his opening Test as West Indies captain but will be looking forward to make amends in the second match, which will be played in front of his home crowd. Over the next few days the West Indies coaching staff is expected to do a lot of work with the batsmen, who failed miserably in the first Test. The West Indies tallied 262 in the first innings and 216 in the second. Things could have been far worse for them in the second innings were it not for a record last wicket stand of 82 between Shane Shillingford and Sulieman Benn.



New Zealand skipper Brendon McCullum said he was expecting a backlash from the home team. “The West Indies are a very proud team and we expect them to come hard at us in Trinidad. They are not a team to roll over and we expect that they will be coming for us. There is not much we can do about that. All we have to do is to prepare well and stop focussing on the opposition. “I mean we have to focus on them in terms of their strength and weaknesses but at the same time we cannot forget our game. We need to keep fine tuning our game and take it from there. We have some very eager players with us and they want to do well badly and this has been working for us over the past year.”