Samuels Sucked in a Bad Shot at a Bad Time: Ramdin

Samuels Sucked in a Bad Shot at a Bad Time: Ramdin: West Indian side got thrashed in the First test against the Australians at Windsor Park, Roseau. The merciless Australians were too hot too handle for the home side. It only took 3 days for the wrath of the Australians to retain the Frank Worrell trophy once again. They stamped their dominance and authority on West Indies by chasing down the target of 47 in only 5 overs with 9 wickets in hand.

Now, West Indies will face Australia in the second Test at Sabina Park in Jamaica starting from next Thursday. Denesh Ramdin, fittingly admitted his side’s inadequacy at capturing the crucial moments of the match but yet he seemed quite optimistic about the experience which the young team learned.

He asserted: “We’ll try and take the positives out of this game and move forward. As I said, they are a good unit and we need to play a lot tougher cricket,”

“When we are in positions of strength we need to carry that on. That partnership with Marlon (Samuels) and young (Shane) Dowrich, if they could have taken it to maybe 200 (that would have been good).”

Adam Voges was the catalyst for the Australians in the first innings with a gritty knock of 130* in his debut innings and he combined in a decisive partnership of 97 with Josh Hazlewood which rattled the West Indies completely out of the match as it left the home side with a enormous deficit of 170.

Analyzing the test match on a whole, Ramdin explained: “It’s not the start that we wanted. We didn’t bat as well as we could’ve in the first innings. We made 148 on a good pitch and then we had them with nine wickets down [for 221] but that partnership for the last wicket (97 between Adam Voges and Josh Hazlewood) took it away from us, “Marlon Samuels and young Dowrich batted really well but that hour before and after the tea break is where we lost the game.”

It was always an uphill difficult task for the mediocre West Indies side to compete with the world’s second best test team. Ramdin lavished praises on the Australian batter Voges as well as their disciplined bowlers.

The West Indian test skipper added: “It’s a very difficult pitch to start [but] guys who got starts went on. You saw Adam Voges, he got that start and he made a big hundred for his team.
“They swung the ball, they bowled good areas, they created pressure which they normally do and we didn’t handle that pressure as well as we could have.”

Prior to the test match, Ramdin had affirmed that now there is a blazing need for the senior most men like Samuels and Bravo to step up and smoothen the transition phase for the young side in tests. Ramdin was not amused by the irresponsible shot of Samuels which marked his downfall.

“That was a bad shot, a bad time,” Ramdin said Samuels’ dismissal. “We lost a wicket in the over before and he got sucked into that short ball again. Hopefully he cannot let it happen in the near future.”

Meanwhile, it’s notable that the West Indian selector had excluded the experienced Shivnarine Chanderpaul who had an astounding average of 50 against Australians. When asked about the possible effect of Chanderpaul’s exclusion from the side, Ramdin said: “His decision was made and we have to just move on with it,” Ramdin said.

“His experience is countless but we have to move on. We’ll try to take the positives out of this game and move forward. They’re a good unit and we need to play a lot more tougher cricket’s
Ramdin seemed elated with his young guns as Devendra Bishoo racked up a six-fer while the rookie batsmen Dowrich stood up with his resilient knock of 70 in 2nd innings after West Indies was reeling at 38-3. Ramdin insisted: “Young Dowrich did well for himself so far,”

“If he could have gone on to get a hundred today it would have been brilliant. It’s something he can learn from. He has stood up against one of the best bowling lineups in the world.”
Ramdin also batted for his decision to bat first. He argued:
“We decided once we won the toss we were going to bat. That was no excuse, we batted poorly. Our shot selection wasn’t up to standard.”