World Cup Place Will Boost Windies Cricket- Viv Richards
May 29, 2019 at 7:26 PM
Legendary batsman Viv Richards believes Windies cricket will benefit from qualifying for the 2019 ICC World Cup in England. He also added that it would be a huge blow if they did not make it to England.
Meanwhile, Windies was in danger of missing out on the World Cup after ICC reduced the number of teams from 14 to 10.
The top eight teams in the ICC rankings qualified automatically for the mega event. As a result, the ninth-ranked WIndies had to play against nine other nations in Zimbabwe for the final two places.
Meanwhile, the Caribbeans squeaked through when they beat Scotland in a rain-affected encounter.
“I won’t say I am relieved because I felt that they had a strong enough team for them to win and qualify,” Richards told AFP. “West Indies have a World Cup pedigree, and that makes all of us proud in the Caribbean,” he added.
Meanwhile, the former dashing batsman feels Windies needs to do better as a batting unit in the wake of the loss to Afghanistan in the final.
“There were a few matches that I believe that they came up short in terms of runs. But at the end of the day they had the bowlers to defend whatever they scored,” Richards said. “But in the big league they will need to score more runs,” he added.
Richards, who was a part of two World Cup winning teams feels it will benefit his country’s cricket.
“That should be encouraging and help the team as you need to compete against the best to improve,” he said. “It would have been a huge loss had we not qualified. “It would have been like Manchester United or Liverpool not being in football’s Champions League,” added Richards.
In conclusion, Richards urged ICC to rethink about increasing the number of participating teams. He believes more participant will be good for international cricket.