Lead West Indies selector, Roger Harper. has acknowledged feeling disappointed with the West Indies 1-2 defeat by England in the recent three test series but has opted to take things into perspective.
Harper, speaking on the latest Mason and Guest radio programme, voiced his disappointment with the series defeat.
“Yes of course I am disappointed but I think everything has to be put into perspective. I think we were very elated after the victory in the first Test and we expected that we would continue to play at a very high level and even get better,” he expressed.
Harper said that it is difficult to come to grips with West Indies being in a comfortable position in the second Test and flat lining towards the end, which ultimately changed the course of the series after a victory in the first Test.
“I thought that the fourth day was really the pivotal day of the Test series. I think if you are batting in the first innings of a Test match at 230 odd for four, the first innings is not complete on the fourth day then you would expect that you should be able to, if not be able to win it at least draw that Test match and we really collapsed in that first innings and we let the opponents in, we missed a crucial catch on the morning of the fifth day when England was looking to score quickly and that really could have made a difference in the timing England looked to get that sort of target they wanted to set us and again we failed to bat out two sessions and a half,” he stated.
Nevertheless, the Guyanese said that the batting has always been a point of concern even before departing for the tour. He also indicated that based on statistics seen by him, the batsmen performed better than in previous series.
“You remember before we started this tour, before we actually left these shores there were question marks about our batting and what I found very interesting was the fact that I saw some stats which said this has been the best batting performance collectively for a number of series which I found very interesting. You know I think the average runs per wicket for West Indian batsmen has been higher than what has been achieved for a number of series so I just say this as I said earlier we have to take things into perspective, I thought we were capable of doing better and we should have been able to do better but then we have to look at where we go from here, what we can learn from that tour and what we need to do to make sure we are capable of giving better performances as we go forward,” Harper noted.
With claims of a lack of initiative in the selection of the final XI and the speculation of favoritism to struggling players, Harper confirmed that the teams were selected by the him along with head coach, Phil Simmons and captain Jason Holder.
