West Indies captain disappointed in batting performance

West Indies captain, Kieron Pollard, said that he did not have any words to describe the heavy loss the West Indies suffered on Tuesday at Kensington Oval.

The West Indies were playing in the first One-Day International against Australia and went down by 133 runs after stumbling to 27 for six in the eighth over.

Chasing what should have been a reachable target of 252 by Australia, the West Indies never overcame the visitors’ opening bowling pair of Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood.

Starc finished the game with a five-wicket haul, with three of those wickets coming in his opening spell.

West Indies’ Hayden Walsh Jr. also picked up a five-wicket haul earlier in the day and the 252 looked to be a below-par score despite the pitch at Kensington Oval asking for the batsmen to apply themselves a bit more than the one in St. Lucia.

Pollard, speaking at the virtual media conference the next day, said that the team did not have the fight from the batting perspective, as many of them were unable to negotiate the opening new ball in the power play.

The West Indies captain scored a half century af-ter returning to the team having missed the five-game T20 series due to a hamstring injury. But as he looked at the bigger picture, he said a losing effort is not a good sight.

Apart from Pollard, there was little resistance from the regional side and he said that the entire team was disappointed in the batting performance.

He also highlighted the mode of dismissals, which he termed “soft dismissals”.

With a short turnaround before the other game and 30 points on offer for the winner of each game, Pollard said that they have to come up with better plans as to how they will tackle the opening swing bowling of Starc and Hazlewood.

The West Indies suffered a number of forced changes before the game.

“It is unfortunate for us as we have been struggling with injuries and some of our changes have been forced changes. This is the nature of sport and we have to play with the XI we put on the field and hopefully we can give the better account of ourselves in the batting department.”

Despite this, he was disappointed in the overall batting performance and not being able to chase down 250 runs.

“A team must not be centred around one individual and because one doesn’t play, then we don’t have a good batting performance.” (CG)