Roston Chase, West Indies captain, described his team’s performance as “heart-breaking” and “embarrassing”, against Australia in Jamaica.
At Sabina Park, while playing their 3rd Test match, West Indies’ whole team got out for the second-lowest total in Test history to lose the third Test match and resulting it as 3-0.
On the third day, West Indies was set to chase the target of 204, but they all ended up at 27 in 14.3 overs only, by setting new and unwanted records their way. In 1995, New Zealand set the lowest Test record of 27 runs.
West Indies previous Test run total was 47, but this time they were even 20runs behind that. For the first time in Test history, it was recorded that only six runs were made collectively by the top-six batters and facing seven ducks by any team in any Test innings.
Mitchell Starc, Australia’s fast bowler, took the fastest Test-five, by getting the first five wickets of the innings in only 15 balls, while getting the first three wickets in the first over.
Chase was disappointed while speaking up during the post-match presentation and also at the press conference.
“It’s disappointing,” Chase said. “We’ve been putting ourselves in positions to win games, and then we just lay down and not put up a fight in the last batting innings. It’s quite heart-breaking, because I think we did it in all three Tests, and we’re not really learning from our mistakes. So that’s something we have to really look at.”
“Obviously being bowled out for less than 30 is quite embarrassing.”
“I think the pitches were very tough. I don’t want to say they were too in favour of the bowlers, but they were very tough because, as you can see, this is probably the first series I’ve ever played [where] no batter got a hundred for each side.”
Chase understands that the target of 204 was quite easy to achieve, but no batsman during the match even reached 50.
“I thought it was realistic,” Chase said. “I mean, the wicket was a good wicket, still a good batting wicket. I didn’t think there were too many devils on the wicket, like the last two games where the ball was rolling or bouncing inconsistently. So yeah, we thought 204 was quite gettable. But then, obviously, with the start and stuff being [11 for 6] or something like that, it’s very difficult to really get those runs from there.” He added further.
Chase admitted that it’s a tough challenge for West Indies to restore from here. They have no schedule for the Test match again until October.
“We need to really take a deep look at ourselves as batters,” Chase said. “The next series from here is quite a while. So we have time on our side. So I think that’s what we need to really do, really have a look at our batting this series and see where we can improve and how we can put 300 run totals on the board.”
