WI v SL 2018: Everyone in the Windies team deserves credit for the win, says captain Jason Holder

Jason Holder praised for his young team that has a long way to go.

Jason Holder is excited for his young team. (Mid Day)

Jason Holder, the West Indies Test Captain, has come out and stated, after his side's huge win in the first Test of the two-match series with Sri Lanka, that every member of his team deserves credit for the hardwork done across the match which helped pull off a magnificent victory at Port of Spain. 

Holder after the match was heard saying, "Everyone in this team deserves enormous credit for the way we battled through on a pitch that wasn’t the easiest, I wasn’t worried coming into this final day because the pitch was deteriorating a bit and I just felt our bowlers had to build a bit of pressure and we would be able to strike, and when we struck we got wickets in clusters.”

Holder knows that his side's first innings score of 414/8, that helped them take the lead of 219 runs on a deteriorating surface, was the result of some fine lower order batting by the West Indies. 

Holder praised the tail of the batting line up by saying, "I always back the guys to come in and put up a partnership and put up a fight. It really started with the partnership that Shane(Dowrich) and I had, and then Devendra(Bishoo) came in and played an outstanding knock. Not only did he take time out of the game, he scored runs as well. That not only took time out of the game, it wore down the Sri Lankan bowlers and made it tough for them. I was always backing our guys to get us up to a really good score," 

But, the bulk of the resurrection work, after the failure from the top order, was done the wicketkeeper-batsman Shane Dowrich, who got a brilliant 125, to set up the game and eventually won the man of the match award. 

Dowrich after the game was heard saying, “Consistency is something I have been striving for because I want to score runs in every game. I just wanted to stick to the basics and make the most of all my preparation coming into this series, and it worked out for me,” 

Dinesh Chandimal, the Sri Lankan Captain knows his side were the favourites for the series and also, now, that this is very worrying for a side that he is trying to rebuild. Chandimal expressed his disappointment by saying, "I think our fielding was below par in the first innings when we dropped some important catches,” 

“We need to learn from our mistakes and regroup quickly for the next match. We can take positives - Kusal's knock, was brilliant as a youngster - and also Kumara bowled well in both innings. Credit goes to West Indies, they played some outstanding cricket over five days. Dananjaya de Silva batted at No. 3 last few series and played some great knocks, so if he feels good, we may play him. We'll see how it goes.” 

(Inputs from CricketNext)

 
 

By Kashish Chadha - 11 Jun, 2018

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