DERBY, England (CMC):

Windies coach John Dyson has expressed frustration over captain Chris Gayle's delayed arrival in England, noting the situation was far from ideal preparation for the opening Test starting Wednesday at Lord's.

Gayle was expected to join the squad today but the West Indies Cricket Board sanctioned a request from Gayle to remain with the Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League until tomorrow.

Not ideal

It means Gayle will have less then 48 hours to prepare for the two-Test series where the Windies will defend the Wisden Trophy they captured recently in the Caribbean.

"I've said all along, with the IPL in conjunction with this tour, even if he was arriving as we expected, that's not ideal," the former Australian opening batsman pointed out, echoing sentiments uttered earlier by team manager Omar Khan.

"It's not enough time for an ideal preparation but we will work with it. The medical boys all say that, after that length of flight, you need a minimum of a couple of days to get over the jet lag and re-acclimatise and then you need a couple of days of practice."

He added: "We were prepared to work around that and now that it's been extended out a bit further it puts more pressure on Chris and, I suppose, the people in the West Indies Cricket Board who made that decision."

Gayle's inspirational captaincy and aggressive batting is expected to be a key part of the Windies approach, as they seek to successfully defend the Wisden Trophy they won for the first time in 10 years last month.

The 29-year-old Jamaican has been campaigning in the IPL in South Africa since the conclusion of the one-day series against England in the Caribbean in April, and arrives for the first Test with no practice in the longer form of the game.

Special individual

Dyson, however, said Gayle was a special individual and backed him to pull out all the stops.

"Chris handles a lot of pressure and has played some magnificent cricket over the past 12 months in all forms of the game, and he seems to take these sort of things in his stride," Dyson said.

"But the medical advice is that, when you fly that sort of distance, you need time to recover from the flight and re-acclimatise to the time zones. I also think you need a good couple of hits, at least in the conditions you're going to play in."

West Indies play back-to-back Tests with the second match starting at Chester-le-Street on May 14.