Ramnaresh Sarwan

Colombo: Ramnaresh Sarwan never thought of quitting playing for the West Indies at the World Cup, even after selectors dropped the middle-order batsman.

“No, no, no, not at all,” said a perspiring Sarwan after an intense batting session at the R. Premadasa Stadium on Monday. “I believed I have a lot of cricket left in me and, hopefully, I can contribute more to West Indies cricket.” In his preparations for the tournament, Sarwan hit two half-centuries in a limited-overs series against Sri Lanka earlier this month and followed up with a century against Kenya in a warm-up match over the weekend.

It is a far cry from last November, when the 30-year-old batsman from Guyana was dropped for the Test series against Sri Lanka for what the West Indies Cricket Board described as an indifferent attitude to fitness.

“Every time you are not representing West Indies (it) is disheartening and those lessons are behind me,” he said. “Now it’s important that we try and concentrate on what we have to do here as a team.”

West Indies is expected to battle it out with Bangladesh for one of the four quarterfinals places from Group ‘B’ which also features South Africa, India, England, Ireland and Netherlands.

Last week, Bangladesh moved to No. 8 in the ODI rankings, while the 1975 and 1979 world champion West Indies slipped to its all-time low in ninth place - prompting plenty of discussion about its fall from grace.

“We are not too concerned what people say,” Sarwan said. “We are focussed on what we have to do... at the moment we can’t control what people want to say about us. Our focus is first to play well as a team (and) I’m sure if we do that everything else will take care of itself.”

Despite losing both the Test and one-day series to Sri Lanka, Sarwan said his team had got a fair idea about the slow wickets of the subcontinent.

“We’ve been here longer than any other team, and that would give us an advantage,” he said. (agencies)