LONDON, England, CMC – West Indies head coach Ottis Gibson says he is pleased with the manner in which the senior players have stepped up in order to compensate for the inexperienced members of the unit.
He was speaking after Shiv Chanderpaul (91) and Marlon Samuels (86), the side’s two most experienced batsmen, both hit half-centuries to fire West Indies up to 345 on the fourth day of the opening Test at Lord’s here yesterday.
“A lot was said before the start of the series about the inexperience of the side and the experience players did their part today, [they] did their jobs,” Gibson said.
“Shiv was outstanding, Marlon was good. (Denesh) Ramdin was also very good. (Darren) Sammy played a nice little cameo there and all in all, those guys are taking on more and more of the responsibility for the totals, such as today, that the team gets.”
He added: “That makes a huge difference to us when our experienced players perform. We know we’ve got some young players there that will come good but the experienced players are leading from the front and that’s what we need so everybody is very pleased with the efforts of today.”
Ramdin scored 43 and Sammy a breezy 37 but it was the record 157-run, fifth wicket stand between Chanderpaul and Sammy that fuelled the Windies fightback.
Gibson said he admired the way Samuels, especially, had warmed to the task of bolstering the lower order.
“It is just making players aware of things and Marlon as one of the few senior players in the team understands his role at number six,” Gibson pointed out.
“He was batting with Shiv and batting with Shiv is, to my mind, one of the easiest things in the world because Shiv is such a good player and you can feed off of him … and Marlon has accepted that responsibility very well.
“He understands his role inside the team. At number six, it is crucial that he spends some time out there.”
Gibson said overall, West Indies had produced a much more disciplined display with the bat on Sunday and had executed the team goals as discussed.
“There’s always a batting plan and there’s execution of a plan. In the first innings we didn’t execute very well,” Gibson said in reference to the Windies’ 243 in the first innings.
“It’s one of the hallmarks of this team that we sit down and talk about things after. We analysed our first innings dismissals and there were quite a few soft dismissals and our batsmen showed that they learned from that first innings and they came back this second innings and played really well. Bowlers had to bowl a lot more good balls.”
