JOIN USJames Faulkner hasn’t enjoyed the best of relationships with Chris Gayle and the Aussie paceman set the stage for a potentially combustive scenario by disclosing his dislike for the West Indies’ team as a whole.
“I don’t particularly like them, no one in particular,” said Faulkner who is most likely to make his way into the side for Friday’s Group 2 clash against West Indies here.The left-arm paceman was fined 10 per cent of his match fee in February last for giving Gayle a send-off after dismissing the Jamaican in the Canberra one-day international. Things before that incident and after haven’t exactly been cordial.
“Good players are good players. You have to do things to get under their skin and try and irritate them to try and get them off their game. Players do that to me and I do it to other players. It’s a fact of the game. A lot of it is played in your mind. If you can do something to upset somebody and upset their team, it goes a long way towards doing well as a group,” he offered.
Faulkner didn’t stop there. Defeating the defending champions would mean knocking them out of the event and that to him was an extra motivation. “There are a few players I would like to knock over and more importantly I’d like to beat them. I’m looking forward to it.”
Gayle definitely would be one of the players that Faulkner would be targeting. The Windies’ and Aussie players are staying in the same hotel here but the Tasmanian said he was yet to bump into Gayle. “I haven’t seen him … I’ll say hello though. I’m always polite. But I won’t be saying ‘hello’ if I’m playing on Friday,” he remarked.
Assessing the West Indies team, he said: “They won the last World T20 so they’ve got a lot experience. They’ve got some power hitters. It’s going to be a good contest but I’m really looking forward to it whether I’m playing or not.”
Faulkner is returning to the side after a two-month rehabilitation programme following a surgery to his knee which he injured during the ODI against England earlier this year. “I have been happy with how it has progressed. Any time you get injured you have doubts in your head and you worry about how long it is going to take and whether it is going to affect your long-term career. But I've been well looked after, especially (physio) David Beakley has been unbelievable,” he said.