India tour of West Indies 2011

We'll be better prepared against spin - Gibson

West Indies will be better prepared to combat India's spin threat in the upcoming ODI and Test series, coach Ottis Gibson has said. The West Indies batsmen proved vulnerable against spin during the drawn Test series against Pakistan, losing 32 of their 40 wickets in the two games to slow bowlers. They face a spin-heavy Indian one-day squad, which includes offspinners Harbhajan Singh and R Ashwin, legspinner Amit Mishra, and part-timers Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina and Rohit Sharma.

"It is not a lot of time but we have got a lot of players that have played spin and made runs against spin before," Gibson told theTrinidad and Tobago Express. "People just have to be clear what their game plan is against spin and back themselves and their ability."

The key to overcoming the spin threat, said Gibson, was to rotate the strike, something West Indies had struggled to do during the Tests against Pakistan. "Sometimes, we look very tentative and we sort of lock ourselves in a hole and then our only response is to try to hit ourselves out of the hole. We have got to find the balance between attack and defence," he said.

"They are setting us up, working us out and getting us out quite easy so we need to be able to rotate the strike against the spinners a lot more and make sure that the bowlers aren't bowling too many balls in succession to us."

The batsmen tackled spin quite comfortably in the nets, Gibson added. "We practice very well in the nets and guys chip down the wicket to the spinners in the nets, hit the ball over the top and hit the ball through the covers with ease," he was quoted as saying by AP. "But once the game starts, it seems always to be something that has held us back, certainly for the last couple of series that I have been involved in."

The Indian tour of West Indies begins with a Twenty20 international on June 4 in Trinidad. The teams then play five ODIs and three Tests.