Vin­ode Mam­chan

West In­dies skip­per Chris Gayle has called on his play­ers to be more con­sis­tent in every as­pects of the game af­ter they pro­gressed to the Su­per-Eight, sec­ond round of the World Twen­ty20 Cham­pi­onship on Mon­day. The hosts con­ced­ed a size­able 191 against fa­mil­iar foes Eng­land at the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, Prov­i­dence, and though they turned out win­ners in the end, Gayle said he thought the bowlers were a lit­tle too er­rat­ic. "We have got to be more con­sis­tent in the bowl­ing de­part­ment. Hav­ing con­ced­ed 191 runs against Eng­land, I think we just lacked some pen­e­tra­tion and good line and length, but hope­ful­ly we can get it cor­rect by the next round," Gayle re­marked.

In their first match against, the hosts whipped min­nows Ire­land by a com­fort­able 70-run mar­gin, then they got the bet­ter of Eng­land by eight wick­ets un­der the Duck­worth/Lewis Method af­ter rain in­ter­vened short­ly af­ter the West In­dies com­menced their chase. Since the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the Twen­ty20 Cham­pi­onship in 2007, West In­dies have not been able to lift the ti­tle, and Gayle said he be­lieved this was a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for the guys to be fi­nal­ly suc­cess­ful es­pe­cial­ly play­ing at home. "I think we have a good chance of mak­ing the Caribbean peo­ple proud, and with these two vic­to­ries in Guyana, we should go from strength to strength. We just have to stay fo­cussed and play hard crick­et over the next two weeks," Gayle said.

"I think the crowd was fan­tas­tic in Guyana, and I still call on the peo­ple to con­tin­ue with this sort of sup­port." Both Gayle and Eng­land skip­per Paul Colling­wood were crit­i­cal of the Duck­worth-Lewis sys­tem which pro­vid­ed the for­mu­la for the West In­dies win on Mon­day. Colling­wood said there was a ma­jor prob­lem with the for­mu­la. "I've got no prob­lem with it in one-day­ers, and I know it's made me very frus­trat­ed tonight be­cause I've come off the los­ing cap­tain, but it's cer­tain­ly got to be re­vised in this form.

"Nine­ty-five per cent of the time when you get 191 runs on the board you are go­ing to win. Un­for­tu­nate­ly Duck­worth-Lewis seems to have oth­er ideas and brings the equa­tion com­plete­ly the oth­er way and makes it very dif­fi­cult." Gayle agreed and said it's some­thing the ICC is go­ing to have to look in­to. "I would sup­port what Colling­wood just said. I could have been in a sim­i­lar po­si­tion as well. It's some­thing that can be ad­dressed so it can be even stevens for both teams in the fu­ture. I'm hap­py but it's just un­for­tu­nate for Eng­land." West In­dies will meet Sri Lan­ka on Fri­day af­ter­noon at the Kens­ing­ton Oval, Bar­ba­dos, in a re­match of last year's se­mi-fi­nal when the Windies lost. (CMC)