Vin­ode Mam­chan

T&T fast bowler Shan­non Gabriel has praised the ef­forts of for­mer West In­dies speed­ster Ian Bish­op in as­sist­ing him, af­ter grab­bing his first five-wick­et haul in Test crick­et yes­ter­day, on the sec­ond day of the sec­ond Haier Cup Test match at the Sheikh Za­yed Sta­di­um in Abu Dhabi.

Bish­op, who is here do­ing com­men­tary for Ten­Sport on the se­ries, has been speak­ing to the play­ers who have sought his help and Gabriel is one. Gabriel grabbed 5/96 to help bowl out Pak­istan for 452 bat­ting first. West In­dies at the end of the day had replied with 106 for four.

"It was a good per­for­mance, some­thing I have been wait­ing for a while. It took 20 Tests to come but I will still take it," said Gabriel on his per­for­mance, cit­ing that his fit­ness has a lot to do with his im­proved per­for­mances.

"Com­ing back from Aus­tralia, I had time to re­flect and come up with dif­fer­ent ways of im­prov­ing my ca­reer. I de­cid­ed to get fit­ter know­ing that once I do that, I will be able to bowl bet­ter for longer. I have been get­ting the en­cour­age­ment from Bish (Ian Bish­op) Rod­dy (Es­t­wick) and I am just lucky enough to able to put all that I have prac­tised in play to get the re­sults."

The pitch­es here so far, have been very flat but the La Ro­maine man is not shy­ing away from the chal­lenge.

"Bowl­ing on these pitch­es is a bit hard, takes a lot of out you. You just have to be­lieve in what you can do and go out there and do it. A fast bowler is pret­ty tough, been do­ing it some years now, so I just run in and do my thing."

The T&T Red Force open­ing bowler added that he got more as­sis­tance from the tra­di­tion­al red ball, as com­pared to the pink ball used for the day/night Test in Dubai.

"The pink ball is not do­ing as much as the red. With the red ball as you have to do is put the ball in the right ar­eas and let it do its thing."

West In­dies need an­oth­er 147 runs to avoid the fol­low on when play re­sumes to­day but Gabriel is con­fi­dent.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly we lost a cou­ple wick­ets late but we still have guys in the back there who have scored Test cen­turies, so we are back­ing them.

"We are play­ing to­geth­er as a team, we cel­e­brate each oth­er's suc­cess and we are look­ing to do bet­ter. In the first Test (De­ven­dra) Bishoo grabbed eight wick­ets and we were hap­py for him. We are giv­ing a great team ef­fort and every­one is try­ing their best," said Gabriel on the team's morale.