Watson confident as Australians arrive in West Indies

Three days ago, Shane Watson was preparing to lead Australia in the third tri-series final against Sri Lanka in Adelaide. A victory, an early-morning departure and several flights later the Australians have arrived in St Vincent for a six-week tour of the West Indies and Watson said acclimatising quickly would be one of the biggest challenges ahead of Friday's first ODI.

Watson will captain Australia for the five-match ODI series in the absence of the injured Michael Clarke and it will be his first overseas tour as leader. He believes Australia can carry their good form from the Commonwealth Bank Series into the Caribbean tour, although they will be without Clarke and are waiting on the fitness of the fast bowler James Pattinson, who has a strained buttock.

"Hopefully, we can produce some very good cricket for the fans over here," Watson told reporters in St Vincent. "We have just come off a very big series in Australia, and hopefully, we can continue the form that we showed and bring it in the games against West Indies.

"We are always confident. We know that if we are at the top of our game, we are going to be very hard to beat. Right now, the most important thing is to make sure we have recovered from our long flight and make the best of the next couple of days to make sure we are ready to go for the first match."

Australia have a vastly different squad compared to the last time they toured the West Indies. Only five men from the one-day group that whitewashed West Indies 5-0 in 2008 have made this trip: Watson, Michael Hussey, David Hussey, Brett Lee and Brad Haddin, although Haddin is now the backup wicketkeeper in the ODIs behind Matthew Wade and might not play in the 50-over series.

West Indies have also had plenty of changes since then and their squad for the first three ODIs also features only five men who took part in the 2008 series: captain Darren Sammy, vice-captain Denesh Ramdin, Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard and Kemar Roach. West Indies face a tough task to defeat Australia, having not won an ODI series against anyone but Bangladesh, Zimbabwe or the minnows since April 2008, when they beat Sri Lanka 2-1 at home.

"Australia are a very competitive team, so they will be looking to come at us hard," Pollard said. "But we just have to take on board all of the preparation that has been put in place for us and it into the series and try to do our best."