South Africa hammer WI, winning in an innings and 63 runs in under three days

Roston Chase was the only West Indian that looked like he was ready to dig deep and offer any resistance to the South Africans, but he had no support and the regional side was soundly defeated by an innings and 63 runs.

Playing in St. Lucia in the first Test match of the series, the West Indies team never looked as though they were going to be competitive in the game, which was slated for five days but was wrapped up in two-and-a-half days.

Roston Chase faced 156 balls, which was over 100 balls more than the next West Indian batsman. Chase went on the register the only half century for the team in the match as he scored 62 runs before he was dismissed in the second innings with cut that under-edged and hit his stump from the spinner Keshav Maharaj. The next highest score for the side was Kieran Powell who scored 14 as the West Indies, who needed 225 to force the visitors to bat again, were bowled out for 162.

Though the left arm spinner Maharaj took two prize wickets on the day, the other one being Jason Holder, it was the fast bowlers that continued their success against the West Indies batsmen.

Kagiso Rabada joined Lungi Ngidi with a five-wicket haul in the match. Ngidi took five in the first innings while Anrich Nortje captured four. In the second innings it was Rabada with 5/34, while Nortje picked up three this time and Ngidi went wicketless.

In the match Holder led with the ball when he captured four wickets and the debutante Jayden Seales took three.

But they could not stop South Africa led by player of the match Quinton de Kock who finished with an impressive 141 runs not out to lead his side to 322 runs in reply to the West Indies first innings score of 97 runs.

West Indies coach Phil Simmons said that bad judgement and bad shot selection in the first innings especially was the downfall of the batting for the team.

He said that the West Indies batting line up is strong and most have scored half centuries against strong bowling units but the way they got out this time is not a way we would be proud of and they have to come back and show what they are made of.

Simmons said that as the West Indies try to continue their climb up the rankings they have to make sure “when we play these teams that are higher up, that we play just as intense or even more intense” than the teams that are at our level.

“We played well in four Test matches but that is only the start to how we get up the table and how much we have to play. This has shown us there is still a lot of work to be done which we kept reiterating to the players all during last week that there is a lot of work still to be done so we need to keep working.”

One of the things that they have been trying to work on is the opening partnership in the team.

“That’s one of the things we have been trying to work on very desperately. If you watch back when we win Test matches against top teams we have good opening stands.”

“Against England last time we had good opening stands between John Campbell and Kraigg. That has not been happening and we have been working on that.

“It’s disappointing because when you look at the last seven Test hundreds scored by a Test opener they were all scored by Kraigg. Its disappointing for us and we have been trying to work very hard on that.

Looking ahead at the next Test match, Simmons said that they have to prepare diligent as they did before or maybe a little bit more and also have a look back at the Test match itself.

“I think that the preparation and the training we did before was quite intense but we will see if we missed anything and try to put that in.”

“We need to bat well in the first innings. The other fact is that we need to find a way to bat 100 overs and that has been one of our targets. If we do that against this team then we would put ourselves in a good position and put them under pressure.”