A lot of people didn't expect us to get this far: Jason Holder

West Indies lost the final of the tri-series against the World Champions Australia on Sunday, but the skipper Jason Holder is glad with the way the lads had played. He said that a lot of people didn’t expect Windies to progress into the finals.

“Credit must go to the whole group. A lot of people didn’t expect us to get this far. We’ve put up some pretty good performances leading up to this final. And still in this final, we’ve got some things to shout about. It’s just important that we keep improving. Improvement is the name of the game. We just have to keep building and moving our way up the rankings,” Holder said.

He said that the presence of experienced campaigners like Kieron Pollard in the dressing room helped them and had a great impact on the performances. “I thought Kieron Pollard coming back into the West Indies team did a really good job, not only with the bat and the ball but his presence in the dressing room, his experience counted for a lot. Things like that, we really need around our cricket. Hopefully, we can have him in the dressing room going forward,”

Marlon Samuels and Darren Bravo had scored centuries in the series and he had a few words of praise for them as well. “We asked one of the top four batsmen to put up a big hand each time and go on and get a big score for the team. We got two hundreds in this series, from Marlon Samuels and Darren Bravo. Credit must go to them.” the Windies skipper said.

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The 24-year old also said that the injury to Shannon Gabriel played a crucial role in the loss in the final, as that allowed the visitors to post a challenging total. Gabriel had picked the wickets of Steven Smith and Glenn Maxwell in the match but was later injured.

“I felt we conceded 20-30 too many. We lost Shannon Gabriel as well, his overs at the end were crucial. With the bat, we fell away and didn’t recover after a decent start. The wickets of Smith and Maxwell changed the game; credit to Shannon,” Holder concluded.

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