Skerritt: Camp going well

ST JOHN'S - The West Indies cricket team's two-week preparatory camp for the World Cup is progressing as planned, says manager Ricky Skerritt. Speaking on Friday, the fifth day since the players assembled in Antigua to fine-tune for the tournament in South Africa next month, Skerritt said emphasis has been on personal development.

"We focused on personal development issues and physical fitness training. So far the expectations have been met and generally we have been making good progress," said the Kittitian businessman who has been in charge of the team since 2000.

"You try to work on things like personal responsibility; accepting responsibility for what's needed; identifying a vision and taking action relative to what's need to be done to get you to that next level.

"We [are trying] to focus on team building activities and trying to get the guys to commit to the requirements for success," the manager said. "I think all of them are committed to it but there is question of fine-tuning it and putting it into perspective."

Skerritt noted that since the players were returning from a Christmas break and some minor injuries the aim was to put everything in place during the camp.

"We have some relatively inexperienced players who have not been professionals for very long. We have to make giant steps in short time.

"They play under tremendous pressure and the concentration levels are critical, so we go through mental skills training just like we go through technical and fitness training," he said. "It is something that we haven't done a lot of in the past and something we need to do more of."

The players have today off. From tomorrow they will get into cricket-specific training at the Stanford Cricket Stadium.

"At that point they will have had seven days [training] - and then they will have six days of cricket. It is quite a lot of work in two weeks. After that there is a four-day break before they do anything else. Our next workout after (January 26) will be the following Friday (January 31) in South Africa," Skerritt said.

"As we go along we integrate nets with the reality of playing out in the middle. It is trying to get the guys to fine-tune themselves technically and focusing on the requirements for One-Day cricket and then giving them opportunities out in the middle in conditions which are as close as possible to the real match."

Skerritt said the Windies have to be careful they don't go into the World Cup short of match practice.

To this end they will have two inter-squad matches, on January 23 and 26, and two matches against provincial sides before they meet South Africa in Cape Town on February 9.

The manager said the camp was planned taking into consideration the break in competitive cricket.

"There are advantages and disadvantages. Most of the teams going into the World Cup would have been playing a series of matches. We would be a little bit short of that kind of opportunity and in that sense someone might say: `Boy, that's not good.'

"But one of the good things about this is that the guys have been able to get rest. They have been able to get some home time, some personal time, so mentally they are going to be able to peak at the right time.

"We are going to go into the World Cup relatively injury-free. A lot of teams are going into it carrying, I believe, more injuries than they want to. Ideally, you should go into a tournament like that with as few injuries as possible. I'm hoping that it will work in our favour. That's the plan."