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Thursday, July 3, 2025

First class season key to WI fortunes says Brathwaite

by

20161104

SHAR­JAH–Open­er Kraigg Brath­waite be­lieves the first class sea­son start­ing next week in the Caribbean will be piv­otal to the West In­dies' con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment as a Test side.

The 23-year-old, who earned Man-of-the-Match ho­n­ours af­ter steer­ing the vis­i­tors to a five-wick­et vic­to­ry over Pak­istan in the third and fi­nal Test here yes­ter­day, said that with a break in the Windies Test sched­ule, it was im­por­tant play­ers re­turned to the four-day com­pe­ti­tion and honed their craft.

"We have a good group of young guys so it's im­por­tant for us to keep work­ing," he told re­porters here.

"Ob­vi­ous­ly we have five months be­fore the next Test se­ries [but] we have first class crick­et go­ing on back home when we get back so it's key for all the guys to go there and keep work­ing hard.

"The same things you want to do in the Tests you do there so that when you come for the next Test se­ries you will be ready and look­ing to win games."

Brath­waite was mon­u­men­tal in the just con­clud­ed game as he helped West In­dies pull off their first Test win in 19 months and first on for­eign soil in four years.He car­ried his bat for a mag­nif­i­cent un­beat­en 142 in the first in­nings and fol­lowed up with 60 not out in the sec­ond in­nings, as West In­dies over­hauled a vic­to­ry tar­get of 153.

He put on 87 in a match-win­ning un­bro­ken sixth wick­et stand with fel­low Bar­ba­di­an Shane Dowrich, who al­so struck an un­beat­en 60.

The pair pulled the Caribbean side around from 67 for five late on the fourth day and then calm­ly steered them to 114 for five from the start on the fi­nal morn­ing, eas­i­ly col­lect­ing the 39 re­main­ing runs.

"Think­ing about it (vic­to­ry) you got a bit ner­vous but at the end of the day I be­lieved that me and Shane could've done it," Brath­waite said.

"We kept talk­ing to each oth­er and I was con­fi­dent we could've done it so I wasn't that ner­vous."He added: "It was a low pitch so I kept say­ing [to my­self] I want­ed to be on the front foot more than the back foot and that's what I was think­ing about through­out the whole in­nings. That was my aim."

The vic­to­ry was the first for West In­dies since they beat Eng­land in Bridgetown last year May and was al­so their first of the se­ries af­ter eight con­sec­u­tive de­feats stretch­ing back to the Twen­ty20 and one-day se­ries last month.

Brath­waite said the suc­cess would be a boost for team morale but stressed the need for West In­dies to con­sis­tent­ly re­pro­duce the good things they had done in this Test.

"It will do a lot for the team. Ob­vi­ous­ly the guys are very hap­py and we know what we did to win so I think it is key go­ing for­ward that we con­tin­ue to work to­wards that goal and put in the nec­es­sary stuff you have to do to get wins," Brath­waite point­ed out.

"We've got to win so we know what we have to do, we know what we did and it's im­por­tant to stay pos­i­tive and look to get more wins in the fu­ture." (CMC)


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