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Fort Lauderdale (Florida), July 3 : Exciting off-spinner Sunil
Narine says he has banished the demons of the England tour and is happy
to be back in form for the West Indies side.
The 24-year-old
produced a superb performance to take four for 12 from four overs as
West Indies clobbered New Zealand by 61 runs here Sunday to make a clean
sweep of the Twenty20 International doubleheader.
He snatched three for 34 in Saturday's 56-run win to finish the series as the leading bowler with seven wickets.
"Coming
out of England, I knew I had to do something special for the team. It's
good to be back home," Narine was quoted as saying by Caribbean Media
Corporation (CMC).
"The wicket suited my style of bowling. My
strategy was to go out and do what I'm accustomed to - that is to go out
and get wickets for the West Indies. I felt I did my job quite well
today and everyone is happy with the outcome."
Playing in cold,
unfamiliar conditions of England last month, Narine was a shadow of the
beguiling bowler that confused the Australians in the limited overs
series back in March and who subsequently took the Indian Premier League
by storm with 24 wickets.
He went wicket-less in his debut Test
at Birmingham and took just one wicket in two expensive ten-over spells
in two one-dayers. He also failed to take a wicket in the one-off T20I.
However,
Narine came to life in the lovely sunshine of south Florida, US, at the
weekend, exuding the confidence and enthusiasm that has come to
characterize his brief career.
"I have to say it was a great
effort by everyone in the team and I really enjoyed bowling. It was a
very good weekend for us in the team and the fans in the stands as
well," he pointed out.
"In both matches the batsmen put up good
scores and gave me runs to bowl at, so I knew the onus was on me to get
the ball in the right areas and once I did that, the ball would work for
me."
He added: "I was happy with my three wickets [on Saturday]
but I felt I went for too many runs - I went at over eight runs an over.
Having said that, it was a good pitch for batting and they were chasing
over ten runs an over, so I knew they would come hard at me."
"Ideally, I would look to go at under seven per over in those circumstances, so I made sure I got it right today (on Sunday)."
The
victories broke a nine-game winless slump for the Windies who failed to
beat England in a single match on their recent two-month tour.
The
West Indies will now turn their attention to the five-match one-day New
Zealand tour starting in Jamaica on Thursday and Narine said the
victories had set a nice tone for the series.
"We are on the
right track with these two wins here in America. We set a good tone with
these two wins and the batsmen batted really well," the Trinidadian
explained.
"The way (Chris) Gayle and (Kieron) Pollard batted on
Saturday was really good and made it a bit easy for the bowlers
yesterday. [On Sunday] we played well again with the bat and the bowlers
followed up again."
"We were hyped coming over here. We won by
pretty big margins, but whether we win by 60 runs or 10 runs it doesn't
make much of a difference - a win is a win and we got the results we
wanted."
© IANS
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