The Daren Sammy Cricket Ground (DSCG) in Beausejour, Gros Islet will come alive on Friday 9th July 2021 from 7.30 p.m. with the first of a five-match T20I between the ICC T20 World Champions, the West Indies, and the visiting Australians lead by Aaron Finch.
The second match of the series will be played the following day.
The West Indies are hoping for a turnaround after losing the five-match T20 International series which ended on Saturday July 3, against South Africa at the Grenada National Stadium (GNS) in St. Georges. Although they had household names like Andre Russell, Chris Gayle, Fidel Edwards, Lendl Simmons and Dwayne Bravo, who returned to the side on their team, the series went down to the wire nonetheless.
The visitors came up trumps in the decider, after losing their captain Temba Bavuma without scoring caught by Chris Gayle off the bowling of Fidel Edwards in the first over, the South Africans went on to score 168 for 4 in their allotted 20 overs. The West Indies in reply 149 for 9, at one time they were 110 for the loss of 4 wickets after 14.4 overs. South Africa won by 25 runs and the series 3-2.
Australia will certainly miss a lot of their first-choice players for the five T20I. Marcus Stoinis, David Warner, Kane Richardson, Glen Maxwell, Pat Cummins and Jhye Richardson opted out of the tournament for personal reasons and Steve Smith has an elbow injury. Still, the Aussies are a force to be reckoned with.
The visitors have not played the West Indies in a T20I match since 2014 and they also have not played a T20I in the Caribbean since 2012. Interestingly, they haven’t beaten the West Indies in the last three T20Is.
The squads:
West Indies: Kieron Pollard (Captain), Evin Lewis, Chris Gayle, Shimron Hetmyer, Lendl Simmons, Fabian Allen, Dwayne Bravo, Jason Holder, Andre Russell, Nicholas Pooran, Andre Fletcher, Sheldon Cottrell, Fidel Edwards, Akeal Hosein, Obed McCoy, Oshane Thomas, Hayden Walsh Jr, and Kevin Sinclair.
Australia T20I & ODI squad: Aaron Finch (Captain), Mitchell March, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swepson, Moises Henriques, Ashton Turner, Ashton Agar, Daniel Christian, Adam Zampa, Alex Carey, Ben McDermott, Josh Philippe, Matthew Wade, Wes Agar, Jason Behrendorff, Josh Hazlewood, Riley Meredith, and Andrew Tye.
Travelling reserves: Nathan Ellis and Tanveer Sangha.
The two teams will meet again at the DSCG in the remaining matches on Monday 12th, Wednesday 14th and Friday 16th July.
