Tuesday huh?

I can't spend the whole week worried about the lads from the Caribbean, that would be too much worry but I am very cautious and many (mostly media) views that Chris Gayle is the key man for the West Indies. 

Cue a dumb pun about wind...

Gayle is good, very good, but he's no AB de Villiers, Kumar Sangakkara or Steve Smith or whoever. Nor is he too flash in Aotearoa, Gayle has hit only one century in Aoteaora against the Black Caps which when you consider that he's hit 22 centuries in his career is a pretty big gap.

So there's no real need to worry, because the chances of Gayle playing first of all and then leading the West Indies to victory are slim.

Even if Gayle goes bang, there's enough skill in the bowling Stable to limit the rest of the West Indian players as well as having enough power in our batting to nullify Gayle's work.

It's sad, because Gayle's one of my favourite players but there's not real inbetween for Gayle. He either goes big, massively huge kind of big or he's gone within the first few overs. 

The issue for the Black Caps, if they listened to silly media folk would be that they focus too much of their energy on trying to stop Gayle. Which won't happen because they know if they play at their peak on Saturday that it won't really matter what the West Indies do.

Our strengths such as swing bowling, work well against the West Indies who aren't renowned for their footwork especially at the top of the order. We also know that our batsmen are able to pounce on any sort of weak bowling, by weak bowling I mean three good balls in an over instead of six. The likes of Martin Guptill, B-Mac, Kane Williamson and Ross Taylor will know that if they can defend and leave wisely that opportunities will present themselves.

It's Tuesday, I'm still a bit weary of the knockout cricket aspect though. If Gayle doesn't show up, someone else could have a career highlight and all of a sudden we're under the pump. 

I'm pretty excited to see the Black Caps under the pump.