India are set to begin their preparations for the next year’s ODI World Cup when they go against the West Indies in the opening match of their three-game ODI series at the in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday. Indian bowling coach Morne Morkel has described the upcoming series as an important assignment for them in building a formidable squad, with the team also looking to bring about consistency in bowing. In the ODIs, India have been met with a few challenges recently. They have suffered defeats in two of their last three ODI series, making the West Indies tour an opportunity to regain rhythm and strengthen their approach before the World Cup.
"Look, for me, the main focus I reckon would be, we can talk and you can look at different options, how you want to go about playing XI. But for me, the end of the day is that whoever walks onto the field now, up until the World Cup, starting on Sunday, needs to know that there's a certain standard we want to achieve. I want these players to put themselves under pressure, as much pressure,” Morkel said at the press conference.
"I think coming to the World Cup on the biggest stage, you can't decide a month or a week before the tournament that now we're going to step things up. I think it starts now with this series against West Indies, how, with bat, ball and in the field, we put ourselves under pressure.”
"I want to see guys going to Shubman and asking for the ball and wanting to create the wicket opportunities and not be sort of protecting their own space. I think that will be a great goal for us. You know, if we are maybe 30 for 4, who's going to go and get that partnership and get us to 100? So if we can throw ourselves in certain situations and guys can figure out ways how to play those situations and learn and take learnings about that, there will be growth and that will help us down the line."
Morkel also spoke about the workload management amid injury concerns to the fast bowlers, with players like Jasprit Bumrah, Harshit Rana, Hardik Pandya and Nitish Reddy repeatedly missing games due to injury.
"We're constantly keeping an eye on workload management, how to give the guys the best opportunity to be fit and put their name in the hat for selection. We've got Hardik, we've got Harshit Rana, all those guys still on the sidelines, and we're excited to get them back and get them playing and get them fit again. So that's part of our job to sit with the medical side and map that out.
"But there's definitely a plan for each and every individual, and we'll keep on monitoring that and coming up with the best way forward to give the selectors and to give everybody the best sort of group to pick from."