T and T ready to take on Pollard, says Rampaul

The right-arm paceman has established himself as an integral part of the West Indian national side, and said improved fitness was the key to his recent successes. “Basically, I have been working on my fitness,” Rampaul told newsmen on Sunday. “I have been working on my bowling with coach (Ottis) Gibson, doing a lot of work on my bowling, watching videos of my bowling. I have been doing a lot of gym work, a lot of fitness work. It all paid off in the end.”

Having won both their matches in Hyderabad, T&T begin their Group A campaign against the Mumbai Indians at the Chinnaswamy stadium on Monday. “The guys are confident,” Rampaul offered. “We had two good games and came out victorious in the qualifiers. We are just sticking to the basics, we don’t want to get overconfident. There are some tough teams in this tournament and we just want to take it game by game.

“Coming in to the tournament, we focussed more on the two games we needed to win to get into the main tournament. We did more reasearch on the two teams we were going to play. Now, we have changed our focus to the four games coming up next.”

Like skipper Daren Ganga had said in Hyderabad, Rampaul agreed that fellow-Trinidadian
Kieron Pollard’s presence in the opposition will add an extra spark. “It does give us the encouragement to play harder,” Rampaul noted. “Obviously, we want to be on the winning end. All the guys were geared up and ready once we heard that we are playing Mumbai. We are ready to face him.”

The absence of several key players in the Mumbai ranks would not impact T&T’s mindset, he asserted. “We set out to win each match. You could have the weakest team and win the tournament, you just have to play good on the day.