Assistant coach, Roddy Estwick wants West Indies to restrict England to under 200 in the first innings of the first Test but reckons his side has a bit of work to do in order to reach the target.
Estwick was speaking at a virtual press conference yesterday following the close of play on day one.
He stated, “I would like to bowl them out for 175, anything under 200 we will be happy,” while adding “we got some way to go, obviously they’ve got quite a bit of batting depth, the batting is quite long so we got to work but on these pitches it seems you got to be very patient, you’ve got to be very disciplined so it is something we got to hit the ground running tomorrow.”
With only 17 overs bowled in the day, Estwick suggested “17 overs isn’t a long time out there in a test match,” but commented that it was enough to see what they have been doing and tweak their plans to suit the conditions.
“What we can do tomorrow [today] is bowl better, we got to be more consistent in our line. I thought they left too many balls. We’ve got to make them play a bit more and we’ve got to be a bit fuller,” the former fast bowler noted.
He added: “We had a discussion at the various breaks and one and two things we could do differently, one and two things we will put into practice tomorrow [today], obviously it’s the first Test for a very long time so yes we got a wicket but we think we could bowl a little bit better and a little bit fuller and those are the areas we are trying to work on tomorrow.”
Judging from the day’s play the Barbados-born 59-year-old explained that he felt the “wicket was a bit two-paced” and “was a bit slow as well.” This observation, Estwick contended gave the think tank of the team a lot to discuss in terms of field placements.
“…and that was something we were discussing as well, the fielding positions in the slips, where do they stand? Where do we position them? So we got a fair bit of information from the 17 overs to put those things into practice tomorrow and go and execute…,” Estwick stated.
The second day bowls off at 06.00 hours local time.
