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West Indies captain Kraigg Brathwaite said that his team’s 40-run defeat in Providence was mostly due to not grabbing the lead, even after bowling South Africa out for 160 in the opening innings of the second Test.
South Africa was reduced to 97 for 9 when the West Indies bowlers, spearheaded by Shamar Joseph’s five-wicket haul, chose to bat. South Africa reached 160 after a 63-run partnership between Dane Piedt and Nandre Burger for the last wicket. West Indies gave up a 16-run advantage when they were knocked out for 144 in response.
Although Brathwaite acknowledged the importance of South Africa’s last-wicket partnership, he thought the West Indies’ first-inning batting performance was “just not big enough.”
“Yeah, if you look at it, obviously it was quite big,” Brathwaite said on South Africa’s last-wicket stand on the opening day of the Test. “But bowling them out for 160, I was happy. That partnership for them was, was good. You know, it’s cricket where partnerships do happen. So, I won’t really stress on that too much.
“But what I would say is our first innings total needed to be bigger. We needed to get a lead from it. I think that was very important. You can never complain about the bowlers’ effort to bowl them out for 160 but yeah, the batting effort in the first innings just wasn’t big enough. We had to fight back into the game. And, in the end, we fell short.”
West Indies took some encouraging lessons from the two matches, even though they lost the series 1-0 following the first Test’s tie. Despite missing the first Test, Shamar Joseph returned to terrorise South Africa’s top order, going 5 for 33 in the opening session. With 12 wickets, including 6 for 61 in the second innings in Providence, Jayden Seales was the best wicket-taker for the West Indies, while Jason Holder amassed a half-century in the first. Alick Athanaze was also picked out by Brathwaite as someone who he believes will score “many Test hundreds.”
“I think bowling-wise, you look at Shamar coming back in, not playing the first Test, and coming in bowling out South Africa on the first day. Jayden throughout the series, continued to keep coming despite the hot conditions. That was a positive,” Brathwaite said. “You see the two spinners, one of the first time two spinners played together in the Caribbean, and they did well, in particular this game where both of them were under three runs an over. That’s one thing we asked for, and that was great to see.
“I think Alick, his innings was important to continue to keep learning as batters. Alick has a world of potential. I can see him scoring a lot of Test hundreds, but we just got to keep thinking about our game, finding ways to improve. Pretty pleased with the bowling effort throughout the series, and batting-wise, we scored above 200 in three of the innings. So it is just for us to aim to do it more consistently, and that’s always the task. We always hear about being consistent. And I think mentally it’s to find ways to be better.”