‘Big Benn’ will be hoping to produce a big performance for the West Indies when they come up against Pakistan in their crucial ICC Cricket World Cup match tomorrow at the Hagley Oval, Christ Church, New Zealand.
Having missed the opening game against Ireland because of a back injury, only to watch his side slump to an embarrassing defeat in their opening match, Sulieman Benn is confident the Windies can bounce back and produce a win against Pakistan.
The tall, lanky left-arm spinner told reporters that while it was a heartbreaking result for the regional team, they would use it as a learning experience going forward.
“We’re not going to forget it, but what we will do is to remember what we did good in that game and take the positives from it and keep going forward.
“Obviously it was a disappointing result for us, but we are ready to turn the corner and go as far as we can in this World Cup. We have a very important and difficult game against Pakistan, but we are looking forward to that,” Benn noted.
In that four-wicket loss, the West Indies recovered from a shaky position of 87 for five to post a challenging total of 304 for seven, on the back of LendlSimmons’ 102 and Darren Sammy’s career best ODI score of 89.
However, while Benn admitted that 300 was probably a “par score” on the relatively small grounds, it was a poor bowling performance which contributed to their downfall.
“The par score in this World Cup will be around 300, with just four men out of the circle, but we have to take things into perspective and see how good the pitches are and how good the outfields are,” he explained.
“We probably didn’t bowl as well as we could have and going forward we will have to sort that out. Everybody has an off day and at the end of the day we probably had an off day as well.
“We’ve been putting in some hard work in the nets and we’re trying to build from strength to strength and go as far as we can in this World Cup,” Benn added.
The 33-year-old, who has taken 32 wickets in 31 ODI’s for the West Indies, with an economy rate of 4.52, said that although they would be facing Pakistan – which has a reputation to be good players of spin bowling – he still felt he had an important role to play.
“Spinners have a part to play in any cricket game regardless of how the pitch is. You just have to be smart about what you are doing and use your variations and you should be ok.”
