A victory at last!
That must have been the thoughts of the West Indies team and its supporters following the team’s 40-run triumph over Pakistan yesterday at the Guyana National Stadium, Providence to end a two year drought.
The West Indies team duly went one-up in the two-match Digicel Series after defeating Pakistan inside four days.
In the post game interview with the victorious captain Darren Sammy, he said: “The victory was very important. It’s been a while since we won a test match and it was a good feeling. It was total team effort out there we put ball on bat and the way we played together as a team is what I am looking for in the future.”
The two sides endured a nail-biting, low-scoring encounter and according to Sammy they earned the victory because of the fighting spirit which led them to never give up.
“We have our fighting spirit, it never died out there; we fought all three-and-a-half days out there and the belief of the team was quite good. That is what the coaches have been instilling in us `if you believe you can achieve,’ and that is what we did,” Sammy declared.
Assessing the team’s performance, the captain noted that he was very pleased and could not stop commending the players for how they performed.
He said:“We saw how the wicket played on the first day and it was good to see West Indies battling and batting out a whole day on a trying pitch. The batsmen stayed there and dug in and looked to do their best while on the bowling, all the bowlers knew what they had to do and we went out and executed the plan which was to bowl wicket to wicket and build pressure and we got the result we wanted.
“In the second innings, Ravi started us very well, then Misbah got out, we all know what he is capable of then we got Akmal. We always believed we could get the seven wickets today but getting those two out was crucial for the victory,” Sammy added.
When asked what gave them the upper hand, he replied:“It was about winning the crucial moments; we had them on the back-foot throughout the match and it was us who won the crucial moments, hence the victory.”
Sammy also expressed his appreciation for test debutant Devendra Bishoo who played two critical roles in the match bowling in the Pakistan first innings and his batting in the West Indies second innings especially.
