After losing the Test series, West Indies, the home side, lost a five-match T20i series against Australia too. Similar to the Test series, the Windies batters failed to make an impact and this is something that the West Indies skipper Shai Hope also talked about after the last T20i.
The inability of the West Indies to build on early victories had defined the first three games of the series. They only achieved 189 in the first game in Jamaica, despite being 123 for 1 in the thirteenth over. 63 for 0 turned into 172 for 8 in the second. Hope and Brandon King put on 125 for the opening wicket as the series went to St Kitts, but the middle order was unable to thrive.
They partially overcame their dismal openings in the last two games—67 for 4 turned into 205 and 9 and 32 for 3 turned into 170—but Australia was always able to leave with margins.
“I just didn’t think we put together a proper batting display,” Hope said at the post-match presentation. “We either started well and finished poorly or the other way around. When you’re playing against quality opposition like Australia, you’ve got to put things together for a more complete game.
“As a batting group, we didn’t really give ourselves the best chance to put a big score on the board consistently. And that’s probably where we fell short… We’ve always been one step behind the eight ball.”
Hope wore a rueful smile when asked about the fact that his team didn’t get the chance to chase once in the series as Mitchell Marsh won all five tosses.
“I think here in the Caribbean, we all know the stats show chasing is always the better thing to do,” he said. “Whether it’s the dew factor, wind factor, you always have that scoreboard in front of you, so you have an idea of how to go about the chase. But it’s something that I can’t control. Unfortunately, I didn’t win any [tosses]… It’s just one of those things for us.”
Although West Indies lost all the games, Hope saw hope in his bowling lineup as Alzarri Joseph was on song and Jediah Blades, the young seamer, showed promise too.
“We understood the struggles of bowling spin here on this ground and surface,” he said. “But [Hosein] is a quality bowler and we just backed him to come and do the job, and he did exceptionally well for that four-over spell. Just unfortunate that, again, we didn’t have as many runs on the board as we would have liked.
“I still must commend the guys for the effort that they showed in the back end, to give ourselves a chance to win the game. But once you don’t have that many runs on the board, then you [have] got to hope everything goes perfectly in the field. It just didn’t happen for us.”
Now, West Indies will play a white-ball series against Pakistan starting from 31st August. There is not much time for new strategies to test for the West Indies.
“I think that we’re a little bit clearer in the bowling unit,” Hope said of what can be taken from this series. “We certainly executed a lot better than we did in the first few games. We’ve got to put this one behind us, and look ahead for the Pakistan series, and see where we can get that combination and that success going.”
