North Sound–West In­dies Cap­tain Chris Gayle has warned that the Dig­i­cel Se­ries against South Africa could be the last chance for sev­er­al non-per­form­ing bats­men in the squad.

Grilled at the pre-se­ries me­dia con­fer­ence, Gayle said that per­for­mances of the bats­men in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed ICC World Twen­ty20 tour­na­ment should have been a wake-up call.

"It should be a wake-up call but from my point of view maybe it is a pres­sure sit­u­a­tion. The cou­ple of days off could have let the play­ers look in­to them­selves a bit more and look to step up against South Africa," Gayle as­sert­ed. "(South Africa) are tough op­po­nents, when you look at their bowl­ing at­tack it is one of the best in the world.

The chal­lenge is once a par­tic­u­lar bat­ter can put his hand up and be count­ed, then it should be good for them and the team," Gayle said while high­light­ing that the Windies bat­ting in the ICC T20 was be­low par. "Our bat­ting dis­play wasn't up to scratch. Hope­ful­ly the guys can be ready phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly. We've got to try and start fresh and take it from there," Gayle not­ed. The open­ing bats­man al­so said that should the se­lect­ed bats­men con­tin­ue to un­der-per­form the se­lec­tors could look to bring in play­ers who are cur­rent­ly on the West In­dies A Team tour and sin­gled out Trinida­di­an top or­der bats­man Dar­ren Bra­vo."That's (the Windies A team) a good place to start. (Dar­ren) Bra­vo is do­ing pret­ty well. Hope­ful­ly he can con­tin­ue from where he start­ed. We are look­ing to turn around the sit­u­a­tion. The se­lec­tors have come up with new strate­gies and hope­ful­ly when we come about the sit­u­a­tion hope­ful­ly they make the right choice," Gayle said.

Gayle said that while there were no ma­jor changes to the squad the play­ers must see this as a crit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­deem them­selves. "Com­ing off the loss of the (ICC) T20s and com­ing up against a top team, it's go­ing to be dif­fi­cult but it is for us to up­lift our­selves and re­bound from where we fal­tered," Gayle said. The West In­dies crashed out of the ICC T20 tour­na­ment af­ter a heavy loss to Aus­tralia in a must win game in the Su­per Eight stage. Alas, both teams were dumped out of the tour­na­ment in the Su­per Eights, and the re­crim­i­na­tions for the South Africans have been par­tic­u­lar­ly long and loud. De­spite boast­ing two of the most fear­some pace bowlers in the tour­na­ment in Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel, not to men­tion the can­ny Charl Langeveldt, it was their bats­men who strug­gled to lay the nec­es­sary foun­da­tions for vic­to­ry.

The match starts at 1.45 pm and will be car­ried live on CNC3. The re­main­ing T20 clash, as well as the five one day in­ter­na­tion­als and three Tests will al­so be shown live.