SHARJAH, United Arab Emirates, CMC – Four dismal batting displays in as many outings left West Indies One-Day captain Jason Holder with very little to explain here yesterday.
“It’s just a situation where we need to turn things around. We really need to look at ways we can improve,” the 24-year-old said following his side’s 111-run hammering at the hands of Pakistan in the opening ODI of the three-match series.
“Obviously one big area for us is our batting. We just definitely need to set it up a lot better than we did today. I felt we did see off the new ball and it’s just a matter of is rotating the strike a lot better than we did today.
“I think once we do that going into this next game, we should be in better stead.”
West Indies have precious little time to turn things around with the second ODI carded for tomorrow at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium.
At the same venue yesterday, they failed to chase down 287, crumbling to 175 all out off 38.4 overs, with only veteran right-hander Marlon Samuels showing any enterprise with a top score of 46.
The performance was not dissimilar to those in the preceding three-match Twenty20 series, where they suffered an embarrassing whitewash.
A meagre 115 left them with a nine-wicket defeat in the first T20 International, 144 meant they were 16 runs short of their target in the second contest and a shocking 103 for five resulted in an eight-wicket loss in the final game last Tuesday.
The string of sub-par efforts coupled with yesterday’s poor outing were all triggered by Pakistan’s spin attack and Holder acknowledged better needed to be done in combatting the slower bowlers.
“We just need to find ways to rotate the strike. Obviously spin has played a heavy part in our downfalls,” Holder noted.
“We just need to find ways to tick over the scoreboard and then obviously maximise our boundary options. Once we do that going into these next few games, we should be in better stead.
“But having said that I thought their fast bowlers bowled well, our fast bowlers bowled well as well and I thought we played them reasonably well up to that point. We need to buckle down a little bit better to the spin.”
