The New Zealand Under-19 team will play their final warm-up match ahead of the start of the ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup tonight, when they take on the West Indies in Dubai.
The kiwi side beat Canada by five wickets in their opening warm-up encounter on Monday, chasing down their target of 120 after 35.5 overs. The wickets were shared amongst the seven New Zealand bowlers used, before an unbeaten 59 from Canterbury’s Ken McClure secured a comfortable victory.
Their first Group D match of the tournament is on Friday against Sri Lanka, before they take on UAE on Sunday and England two days following that. They need to finish in the top two to progress through to the quarter-finals.
Coach Grant Bradburn said the players had learnt a lot from their opening warm-up match.
“It was a good winning performance from the boys, but most importantly there was lots of valuable learning on foreign conditions,” said Bradburn.
“The Canadian side contained two very good spinners, so this was a great opportunity for our batsmen to experience adjusting to playing spin on these spin friendly conditions.”
Bradburn also felt that the side had no easy matches in their pool.
“The conditions at Sharjah are going to be a real test for our guys. The bare tracks have no grass on them at all, which is foreign to all of our players.
“We play both Sri Lanka and UAE at Sharjah, and both will be a big challenge for us.
“The sub-continent teams here like India and Pakistan will be tough to beat, but on the day I think any of the top 8 teams could beat each other.“
All matches will be livescored at http://www.icc-cricket.com/u19-world-cup.
