Barras to name World Cup squad

CRICKET Papua New Guinea will announce the 15-man Barramundis squad this week before the team depart in a fortnight (May 12) for West Indies, ahead of the ICC Twenty-20 (T20) World Cup in June.
Head coach Tatenda Taibu said team preparations resumed last week and has been going well, especially with the lead-up competitions they had from their tour abroad and the recently concluded Isuzu T20 Smash tournament.
Taibu told The National that they had a few practice matches lined up in West Indies before getting into the warm up fixtures that was scheduled by ICC before the World Cup kicks off on June 2.
“We will be taking 15 players for the World Cup which will be announced on Wednesday as well as five non-travelling reserves,” said Taibu.
“We have five reserves (that will remain in country) because you never know with an intensive tournament like that, sometimes you get injuries where a player cannot continue.”
Taibu said preparation has been going well for the team as they look to get into detail of the plans that they have against the teams they will play against in their group.
“After the T20 smash, we gave them a little bit of a break,” he said of the squad.
“The reason for that was just to rest and recuperate because some of the players had come from the tour and you always want to give players a bit of time so that if they’ve got any niggles or any injuries or any check-ups they need to do to make sure that they’ve got that sorted before the intensive training starts again.
“We commenced practice again last Monday, starting with a couple of meetings and then a lot of strength and conditioning.”