Opener David Warner Monday vowed Australia will show no mercy to the West Indies in this week’s first Test in Hobart after the tourists’ embarrassing warm-up defeat.
The West Indies head into Thursday’s opening Test on the back of a 10-wicket loss to a rookie Cricket Australia XI at the weekend, raising doubts about their competitiveness for the three-Test series.
Asked if they would take it easy on the Windies, Australian vice-captain Warner told Sky Sports radio: “Not at all.
“We have to come out and execute our skills as well as we can. As a batting unit we know they are going to come real hard in the first session.
“They did that when we were in the West Indies, they got early wickets against us. We had to play the sensible game of playing straight but that was for the conditions over there.
“Conditions here are a little bit in favour of the batsmen — you can actually play your shots.”
The Australians spanked the West Indians by nine wickets in Dominica and by 277 runs in Jamaica in their two-match series in May and June.
Despite being the world’s fifth-ranked batsman, Warner has surprisingly never scored heavily against the Windies, averaging just 26.90 from five Tests, well down on his career mark of 50.48.
In this year’s Caribbean series, he scored just 98 runs in two Tests — 62 of them in one innings.
He is currently in fine form after his man-of-the-series 592 runs at 98.66 in the recent three Tests against New Zealand, but Warner admitted he was wary of the Windies attack led by Jerome Taylor.
“It will be interesting to see what lengths they bowl,” he said, adding that he had done his homework on Taylor and new-ball partner Kemar Roach ahead of the series opener at Bellerive Oval from Thursday.
“I know Jerome Taylor likes to bowl it full because he likes to swing the ball. A high percentage of his wickets are caught behind — that’s something we have to take notice of.
“And Kemar Roach is a very good bowler, he swings them away, sort of angles it into the right-handers. We will have to be on top of our game,” he added.
The West Indies last won a Test in Australia in 1997, while their last winning series Down Under was in 1992-93.
