BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – After leading his troops to a huge victory over England in the first Test West Indies skipper Jason Holder believes once the regional team remains consistent in its efforts, success will follow.
The Windies defeated England by a mammoth 381 runs, their third largest ever margin of victory at Kensington Oval on Saturday to take a 1-0 lead in the three-match series. Holder led from the front with a fighting double century in the second innings while Shane Dowrich scored an unbeaten century.
Roston Chase then starred with the ball in England’s second innings, snagging eight wickets to help the home side to victory inside four days.
“Yeah it was definitely special and I have to give credit to the boys. We asked for a really big effort today, we knew how important today was and the context of the game and the context of the series and it was very, very good to see that we could follow up the first few days of play with a day such as today,” Holder said in his post-match interview.
“Consistency is something that we always speak of in the dressing room and I just want the guys to be consistent. I still think that we could still strive to be a little bit better in the first innings and solidify ourselves when we get starts and try to carry on as deep as possible.”
“I expected a better showing than the first innings for sure, but with the nature of the pitch I always backed our bowlers to bowl them out for a reasonable total. We knew it was the sort of pitch that if you got one wicket you could get two or three quickly and that happened for us today. It’s just a matter for us to continue being consistent, especially when we bowl so we can hit the areas that we really want to hit to cause trouble,” he added.
Despite his team’s resounding victory, Holder said there were still areas which they needed to improve on.
However, he admitted the win would boost the side’s confidence ahead of the second Test which begins next month.
“We had quite a few starts in the first innings and a few guys got half centuries but no one got a century, so I think if we can translate what happened in the second innings to the first innings I think it’d be a lot better for us,” the captain said.
“It [the win] should definitely boost us, but I really don’t want to focus too much on England. They’ve got their stuff to work out and we just have to focus on what we need to do to close this series out.”
