West Indies captain Jason Holder has praised his bowlers for their efforts but chastised the batsmen for their non-conversions.
Holder, in a recent interview highlighted “I can’t ask the bowlers to do much more than they have done for us so far, outstanding again.”
Holder was speaking with respect to the recent tour of England where the team lost the three test series 1-2.
“I think our bowlers tried in some very tough conditions but credit to all of them. I must always commend them for the effort they gave and I think it was not as bad as it looked.”
Like Holder, Roston Chase also expressed his confidence in the bowlers.
“We know what the bowlers could do. We have a strong bowling attack but the batting hasn’t been really coming up to par for the last couple of years and the guys have been showing some signs of improvement but we were not good enough to come up victorious.”
Looking at the returns for their bowling unit, Shannon Gabriel led from the front as the most successful bowler. He picked up 11 wickets at an average of 32. Gabriel came under the microscope for the decision to have him play all three Tests. In the final match, he bowled only five overs to which head coach Phil Simmons stated it was an issue with his shoe and not his fitness.
Gabriel was backed up by his captain and fellow seamer, Jason Holder and off spinner, Chase with 10 wickets a piece. They averaged 31 and 34 respectively. Kemar Roach was the other outstanding bowler who showed grit and persistence to pick up eight wickets on tour.
However, Alzarri Joseph was not penetrative enough as he took only three wickets in two Tests. In the final Test he was dropped in favour of off spinner, Rahkeem Cornwall who went wicket less in his 46 overs.
Meanwhile, the batting department had little to celebrate as only eight half centuries were scored and no tons. In comparison, England scored two hundreds and 10 fifties.
Holder in the post series interview reiterated ““If you look through or batting performances we had plenty starts, quite a few guys got half centuries got into the 40s and 30s but didn’t quite kick on. I think the difference is with England when [Ben] Stokes got in he went big, [Dom] Sibley got in and went big, and unfortunately we did not do that.”
The number two ranked all-rounder went on to stated “we definitely need our batters to score a bit more runs and it’s been mainly to convert most of the starts we’ve been getting and it hasn’t been the case where they haven’t been getting starts, its mainly converting them.”
Chase also pin-pointed the batting as an area that needed to come good if they are to win the series.
“From the beginning of the tour we spoke about the plans and stuff and we really wanted for the batsmen to put up their hand and we thought for us to win the series it was going to be on the batsmen…” Chase noted.
Leading the way for the Caribbean boys was Jermaine Blackwood who made a return to Test cricket. Blackwood had the highest individual score of 95 for West Indies and had scored another half century to finish with an average of 35.16.
Similarly, Shamarh Brooks was the only other batsman to average over 30, with two fifties under his belt. Kraigg Brathwaite also had two half centuries but was inconsistent and ended with an average of 29.33. Roston Chase and Shane Dowrich were the other two to hit a fifty-plus score. Dowrich, who stroked 61 in the first innings of the first Test scored 20 in the second innings followed by twin ducks in the second Test and 37 and eight respectively in the final match.
Like Dowrich, Shai Hope struggled extensively with a top score of 31 in the series. He only managed 105 runs despite West Indies vesting their faith in him to be fruitful in the series and shockingly played all three Tests.
Opener, John Campbell shared a similar struggle but surprisingly featured in each match. His high score was 32 and managed a meager 84 runs in his six innings.
When asked about the consideration of workloads and his side running out of steam towards the back end, Holder related “It’s hard to say, we won the first Test match with our best team and trying to clinch the series you want to put out your best team every time. Yes we still consider workloads after not having played cricket for a while and it was just one of those decisions where you back your best team to do the job for us.”
