Gayle, Chanderpaul to lift Windies in B’desh

DHAKA (Reuters): The return of Chris Gayle and experience of Shivnarine Chanderpaul should give West Indies the edge in their test series in Bangladesh, the touring side’s captain Darren Sammy said on Wednesday.

The Caribbean team are in Bangladesh to play two tests, the first starting next week, and five one-day internationals, their first competitive action since winning the Twenty20 World Cup in Sri Lanka last month.

“The atmosphere is similar to what we have seen in the Caribbean, most of our guys play in the hot sun and low slow wicket,” Sammy told a news conference. “If we get turning wicket we have world-class spinner in our team, if we get seam, which I highly doubt, we have fast bowler in the team to exploit.

“And also we have got experienced batting line-up, last year we came here without Chris Gayle, he is in the team.

“(Shivnarine) Chanderpaul is still one of the best test batsmen in the world and Marlon Samuels is in good form. We have young players like (Darren) Bravo and Kirk Edwards had a good series here against Bangladesh last year.

“We are quite confident in what we have and what we could do and we just need to go down and execute our plans,” said Sammy.