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Friday, August 15, 2025

Mum, dad watch Shillingford shine

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20120424

Roseau-Shane Shilling­ford said it was "my best day in Test crick­et" as he had an ex­cel­lent four-wick­et per­for­mance to give West In­dies the up­per hand over Aus­tralia on the open­ing day of the third and fi­nal Dig­i­cel Test on Mon­day. The tall off-spin­ner be­came the first Do­mini­can to play a Test match on home soil at Wind­sor Park, and said he was urged on by pres­ence of his fa­ther Hen­son, moth­er Ruthi­na and oth­er mem­bers of the Shilling­ford house­hold who watched and cheered in the Irv­ing and Grayson Shilling­ford Stand. "It felt re­al­ly great to play for West In­dies in front of my fam­i­ly, es­pe­cial­ly my moth­er and my fa­ther, and I knew I had to do some­thing spe­cial," said Shane, who had the ho­n­our of lead­ing the West In­dies on­to the field af­ter Aus­tralia won the toss and de­cid­ed to bat first. "I would say it was my best day in Test crick­et in my short ca­reer so far. Not be­cause I took four wick­ets, but more be­cause of the con­trol and how I was able to put the bats­men un­der pres­sure and then get those wick­ets. My en­tire fam­i­ly was there, it was so ex­cit­ing to see the fans sup­port­ing me. I tried to keep my fo­cus be­cause I knew a lot of things would be ex­pect­ed."

The 29-year-old was cheered by the mem­bers in the colour­ful crowd and closed the day with the re­mark­able fig­ures of 34-8-77-4 as Aus­tralia reached 212-7 off 90 overs. He even­tu­al­ly took two more wick­ets yes­ter­day to end with six wick­ets in the in­nings. He showed great con­trol and got the ball to bounce and turn and used all his vari­a­tions. He said the pitch was a good one even though he got a bit more turn than ex­pect­ed. In an out­stand­ing spell from the Pavil­ion End, Shane ac­count­ed Aus­tralia's most ex­pe­ri­enced bats­men-Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke and Michael Hussey all to close in catch­es-as well as open­er David Warn­er, who was made to work hard for his top­score of 50. "Get­ting these guys out, those are guys who when they get in, score a lot of runs, the likes of Ponting and so on, it's a re­al ho­n­our. I have re­al­ly been work­ing hard at my bowl­ing and I am get­ting re­sults. I al­ways back my­self and be­lieve I can do the job," he said. "I nor­mal­ly get a good amount of bounce but usu­al­ly on the sec­ond or third day, not on the first. Es­pe­cial­ly with the amount of spin I got too, that was a lit­tle sur­pris­ing. Get­ting that bounce and turn I start­ed feel­ing well, I just knew there and then the length and line that I need­ed to hit." He added: "I was a lit­tle ner­vous lead­ing the guys out on to the field but the skip­per told me to keep my cool, just play my nor­mal game. I did and it all just flowed from there."


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