London, England – The West Indies batsmen failed to capitalise on a good start with and this led to a heavy defeat by ten wickets against England in the first T20 International on Friday.
Windies skipper Darren Sammy acknowledged that his team was outplayed.
“We got a great start from our openers but we let England back into the match and they took it from us. Smith played well on his return to the team and Charles did a good job in his first opportunity to give us the sort of start we were looking for. When we get such a great start we have to capitalise.
“The other batsmen needed to play better so we could post a challenging target of about 150-plus. We also needed to field much better if we were to give ourselves a chance of winning tonight. Credit to England, they bowled well after they broke our opening stand and we never got back into the match,” Sammy said.
What started out as a great evening turned into a disappointing night for the Windies and their supporters who turned out to cheer at the Kia Oval. West Indies batted first after being sent in and were bowled out for 125 off 19.4 overs. England replied with 128-0 off 15.2 overs to win easily.
In the West Indies innings, Dwayne Smith made a good return to international stage with a shot-filled 33 and added 51 inside the sixth over for the first wicket with Johnson Charles, who topscored with 36 on debut. Thereafter the innings did not kick-on, and only Danza Hyatt (28) managed to reach double-figures.
“We have several areas we have to address and one of the main ones is rotating the strike. This is something that has plagued us also in one one-day (50-over cricket).
“We have a lot of boundary hitters in the team, but we have to gather more ones and twos. We get too many dot balls when we bat so we will keep working to correct that. In limited-overs cricket it is not just about the boundaries. We have to get better at working the ball into the gaps so that we can keep the score ticking. You can’t get bogged down. That is vital in this fast-pace format,” Sammy added.
Ravi Bopara (4-10) was England’s best bowler and won the Man-of-the-Match award. Openers Alex Hales (62 not out) and Craig Kieswetter (58 not out) then batted well and sealed the match with more than four overs to spare in front a near capacity crowd.
Asked what can be done to earn a series levelling-win on Sunday, Sammy said: “We have training tomorrow morning (Saturday) and we will work on all areas. We worked hard in the build-up but we did not execute well tonight so we have to put in some more work. Whatever time we can get to try and put systems in place we will use and try to be better on Sunday. Things did not go well tonight and we are very disappointed as a team. We know we have to put on a better outing on Sunday night for the people.”
The second match is Sunday at the same ground at 6.30 pm (1.30 pm Eastern Caribbean Time/12.30 pm Jamaica Time).