Pick Aims To Finish On A High

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Pick - wants to finish on a high.

By Richard Gibson, PA Sport, St Lucia

Canada coach Andy Pick hopes his final one-day international in charge will coincide with another competitive display.

Pick, who has been given permission to take charge of the Canadians' ICC Intercontinental Cup final against Ireland at Chelmsford in May, returns to his day job with England Under-19s after Thursday's contest against New Zealand at Beausejour.

Although Canada turned in a below-par display against Kenya in their opening match they hit 228 for seven, their highest score in 11 World Cup matches in a 51-run defeat to England earlier this week.

"It will be nice to finish on a decent game," said former Nottinghamshire seamer Pick.

"We want to carry on the work we did against England, which was more of a complete picture of what we have achieved over the last six months, I think, than the Kenya game.

"We've had one bad game and one good game and it would be nice to finish on another good game.

"Both the International Cricket Council and myself as a coach are very statistically-minded and if we can get 200 against New Zealand that will be three scores which will compare very favourably with other scores made by the associates and scores we made at the last World Cup."

Canada will be looking for big performances from their main four batsmen, captain John Davison, Ian Billcliff, Ashish Bagai and Geoff Barnett, a New Zealander who qualifies for Canada by virtue of his mother's birthplace.

Barnett, the only professional in the side, plays for Central Districts in New Zealand's domestic cricket, for whom he scored 351 first-class runs at an average of 50 last season, and is set to face colleagues Michael Mason and Jacob Oram tomorrow.

Pick is also conscious of starting and ending the innings better with the ball.

"There are a lot of areas where we could easily find another 10 or 20% if we get it right," he said.

"But we must also keep the same levels at the areas in which we did well: the middle-order batting, the fielding and the way the spinners bowled in the middle."