ROSEAU, Dominica — West Indies showed great fighting spirit, which according to captain Darren Sammy "is something to be proud about", but the skipper could not hide his disappointment as his team lost the third Digicel Test against Australia by 75 runs.
Sammy led the batting charge on the final day with a career-best 61. He featured in a superb, last-wicket stand of 49 with Shane Shillingford (31 not out) which brought the lively Windsor Park crowd to its feet and briefly raised hopes of a come-from-behind victory.
The result meant Australia won the three-match series 2-0. Windies veteran Shiv Chanderpaul won the Man-of-the-Series award for his superb batting, which earned him 346 runs at an average of 86.50 per innings. Fast bowler Kemar Roach was the leading bowler in the series with 19 wickets at 19.73 runs apiece.
"We’ve had that never-say-die attitude throughout the One-day, T20 and Test series," said Sammy.
"You can have all that though and you’re not getting the success, which is victories. I know the coach is proud of the team. I am proud of the team as well, but we’d like to have some victories."
West Indies started the final day on 173-5, requiring 370 for victory. They slumped to 245-9 before Sammy and Shillingford went on an all out assault.
Sammy played some breath-taking shots and launched three massive sixes before he was last man out.
"We were thinking that all the time, all the time," he said. "I was speaking to him (Shillingford) in creole and we just kept telling each other ‘we’re going to do it’. He was saying to me ‘if I face 90 balls, we’re going to win’ and stuff like that.
"’Shilly’ and I play for Windward Islands a lot and I know the type of person he is, and he came out there and did a job for the team – 370 is always a difficult task to get on a turning pitch, but I think we did pretty well chasing the total.
"I don’t think everybody was swinging, you see the ball and you play. Our team has a lot of positive guys in the lower order and that’s the way they play. I realise when we play like that we produce more, so we just have to be selective."
The captain noted that the team was generally disappointed with the end result of the series, as they "lost the key moments" and paid for it.
"We believed we could have beaten them," he said. "They won the key moments in the Test series and that was the difference.
"We out-bowled them in the series, we caught better than them as well, it is just that there lower-order scored more runs than we did.
"We keep getting them in positions under 250 for six or seven and they ended up rallying around and building partnerships. All our boys are disappointed in the results obviously."