Newly appointed West Indies captain Kieron Pollard has asked their cricket board to back youngsters and also said that they need to be protected from the “vultures” who always try to bring them down. West Indies have recently played against Afghanistan in all the three formats in Lucknow. Now they will now face India in a limited-overs series, comprised of three T20Is and as many ODIs which is scheduled to start from Friday.

“We need to back these young guys as we have seen their talent and attitude. Exciting times ahead for the youngsters, we have a lot of young talent, it is just about easing them into the world of international cricket,” Pollard said on the eve of the first T20I. “Sometimes you need to be honest with yourselves and protect them from the vultures who are out there to bring them down.”

Earlier India had whitewashed Windies across formats when they visited the Caribbean earlier in August. West Indies, on the other hand, faced 1-2 defeat to Afghanistan recently.

“We have played a lot in India, so it is just a matter of using that experience and trying to win matches here. At the end of the day, we are here to play, we have prepared well and hopefully we show a good performance tomorrow,” Kieron Pollard said.

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After having missed the Bangladesh T20I series, Virat Kohli has returned in the squad. Pace spearhead Bhuvneshwar Kumar has also returned after recovering from the injury. Along with them, spin duo Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav too have been named in the squad. On the other hand, West Indies wouldn’t get the service of their key players – Sunil Narine and Andre Russell.

“Indian pace attack has been doing really well. They are the number one team, it is a good opportunity for us to face the number one ranked side, we cannot take much into that and we need to do our thing. We need to try to find ways to tackle the attack. We are not focused on individuals,” he said. “You do not want to have players trying to fill in the gaps of senior players. For us, Russell, Narine and Bravo are big gaps, but as a team, we have selected 15 players to do a job here.”

“We back each and every player, when these senior players become available for selection, we can have a discussion about it. It is what it is, we have moved on from that and we know the reasons why they are not here,” he concluded.