West Indies captain Shai Hope and star allrounder Jason Holder both agreed that they needed to be more clinical in the defeat to Australia in the first T20 International on Sunday.
The home side slid in the batting and suffered a three-wicket defeat at Sabina Park under the lights.
Half centuries by Roston Chase and Hope put the West Indies in a strong position at 152-2 at the end of the 15th over, but they only managed to make 189-8. Mitchell Owen marked his international debut with a half-century to help Australia to the win. He shared a match-winning stand of 80 runs for the fifth wicket off 40 balls with Cameron Green – who scored 51 off 26 balls – to put Australia on course to reach the target with seven balls to spare.
West Indies will be hoping for a pick-me-up in the second match scheduled for today at 7 p.m. (8 p.m. Barbados Time) as they look to give Andre Russell a rousing send-off as he retires from international cricket.
“I don’t think it was a bad game. We probably weren’t as sharp as we should have been, but we have a few areas to touch up on. We fell away in the middle, the Australians played well, Cameron Green played well, and Mitchell Owen had a good debut,” Holder said.
“In hindsight we should have been a bit tighter to them and made them work harder for their runs, so these are the things we have to out right in the second match. It’s a quick turnaround so we have to come back sharper on Tuesday night.”
Hope noted the total was a bit lower than was expected with the excellent top-order batting.
“We started well with the bat again, we started with that impetus that we always speak about, but we fell away in the backend, and I’d say we left ourselves about 20 or 30 runs short in the backend with that power that we possess in our middle order, so we have ourselves to blame in the batting department. I reckon the guys were probably just going just a little bit too hard, we didn’t really respect the game of cricket in that particular period,” Hope said.
Full Squads for Tuesday
West Indies: Shai Hope (captain), Jewel Andrew, Jediah Blades, Roston Chase, Matthew Forde, Shimron Hetmyer, Jason Holder, Akeal Hosein, Alzarri Joseph, Brandon King, Evin Lewis, Gudakesh Motie, Rovman Powell, Andre Russell, Sherfane Rutherford, Romario Shepherd
Australia: Mitchell Marsh (captain), Sean Abbott, Xavier Bartlett, Cooper Connolly, Tim David, Ben Dwarshius, Nathan Ellis, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Cameron Green, Aaron Hardie, Josh Inglis, Matt Kuhnemann, Glenn Maxwell, Mitch Owen, Matthew Short, Adam Zampa.
Roston Chase top scored for West Indies in the first T20 International against Australia on Sunday night. (GP)
