Team India bowling coach Morne Morkel on Friday said that preparation for the 2027 Men’s ODI World Cup begins now through the upcoming series against the West Indies, and urged all players to embrace high-pressure situations rather than waiting for the mega event to step up their game. India will start their home season via a three-match ODI series against the West Indies at the Greenfield International Stadium on Sunday, followed by matches in Guwahati and New Chandigarh as well.
“Look, for me, the main focus I reckon would be: we can talk, and you can look at different options on how you want to go about playing eleven. But for me, the end of the day is that the guys who ever walk onto the field now, up until the World Cup, starting on Sunday, need to know that there’s a certain standard we want to achieve. I want these players to put themselves under pressure, as much pressure,” Morkel told reporters in a press conference on Friday.
“I think coming to the World Cup is the biggest stage. You can’t decide a month or a week before the tournament now that we’re going to step things up. I think it starts now with this series against West Indies, how with bowling, with back ball and in the field, how can we put ourselves under pressure?” he again shared.
He also shared that the team management held a detailed meeting to set high benchmarks in the ODI format for the upcoming home season as well.
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“Very excited for this series and for us, building towards something special. It’s almost a year away. We had a good team meeting and conversation today about how we would like to play this series and the standards we want to set. So, the words were spoken in the room, and hopefully now over the next week or so we can go out and start getting those foundations and the building blocks in place for this series,” he further added.
To build mental toughness, Morne Morkel said that he has challenged the bowling unit to proactively seek responsibility during tough phases of play under captain Shubman Gill as well.
“We’ve challenged the bowlers today when conditions are tough, or there are certain partnerships that are developing badly. I want to see guys going to Shubman and asking for the ball and wanting to create opportunities and not be sort of protecting their own space. I think that will be a great goal for us if we can develop that now for guys wanting the tough situations. If we are maybe 30/4, who’s going to go and get that partnership and get us at 100? So if we can throw ourselves in certain situations and guys can figure out ways to play those situations and learn and take learnings about that, there will be growth, and that will help us down the line,” he added.
“I think if you look at the last year, we’ve been trying to give guys some game time and see in different roles how they react, and that will be the same now leading into the series and looking at New Zealand, to give guys opportunity with the ball in hand. I think it’s very important for those guys to get the game time, to get a feel for the standard that we’re looking to play,” Morne Morkel concluded.
