CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand – West In­dies Test cap­tain, Ros­ton Chase has laud­ed his troops for their out­stand­ing per­for­mance which helped them earn a draw in the open­ing Test against New Zealand on Sat­ur­day.

Justin Greaves stroked an un­beat­en 202, Shai Hope made 140 and Ke­mar Roach scored an un­beat­en 58, to see the West In­dies up to 457 for six in pur­suit of 531 for vic­to­ry, be­fore both sides agreed to a draw.

It was the high­est to­tal in the fourth in­nings of a Test match in 84 years and earned them their first drawn Test in New Zealand since 2013.

Speak­ing dur­ing a post-match press con­fer­ence, Chase said the team was in high spir­its fol­low­ing the re­sult.

A hap­py Ros­ton Chase speak­ing dur­ing the post-match press con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the drawn Test be­tween West In­dies and New Zealand.

“I wouldn’t say that it feels like a win, but the guys are proud and the boys are quite hap­py, es­pe­cial­ly with the ef­fort that it took to do it. It wasn’t some­thing or­di­nary.

“It was very spe­cial for three of the guys to re­al­ly stand up and put their hands up in a time of need un­der tremen­dous pres­sure, so the guys are re­al­ly proud and look­ing for­ward to a bit of a cel­e­bra­tion,” Chase said.

Head­ing in­to the fi­nal ses­sion of play, the Windies re­quired 132 runs for vic­to­ry with Greaves and Roach at the crease.

Chase said while they con­tem­plat­ed go­ing for the win at one point, they even­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed to play it safe.

“Go­ing back out at tea the guys want­ed to see if they could push for the runs, but it didn’t quite work out the way they want­ed.

“When the last hour came and they came off at the wa­ter break, we had a dis­cus­sion and they said they would just play it out and we didn’t think it was a bad idea at that time, so we were hap­py for them to just try and play it out and that’s what they did,” Chase ex­plained.

The skip­per was full of praise for Hope and Greaves, who added 196 runs for the fifth wick­et, along with Greaves and Roach who shared an un­bro­ken sev­enth wick­et part­ner­ship of 180 runs to se­cure the draw.

“I ac­tu­al­ly thought it [a dou­ble hun­dred] was go­ing to be from Shai Hope; he looked as if he wasn’t go­ing to be out at any point, but it came from Justin Greaves.

“I’m hap­py for him, his first dou­ble hun­dred, but to get it in these con­di­tions away from home, I think that’s a su­perb ef­fort,” Chase said.

“As for Ke­mar, it just shows you his char­ac­ter, be­ing out of the team for the last cou­ple of se­ries, com­ing back in and on his first chance giv­en he shows his class with ball and with bat. It just goes to show you the qual­i­ty of the crick­eter he is and for me he is a mod­ern-day leg­end.

“I mean he’s close to 300 wick­ets, he hasn’t got­ten there yet, but in my eyes, he is a mod­ern-day leg­end for the West In­dies,” he added.

SUM­MARISED SCORES

NEW ZEALAND 231 & 466-8 dec’d. vs WEST IN­DIES 167 & 457-6 in 163.3 overs (Justin Greaves 202 not out, Shai Hope 140, Ke­mar Roach 58 not out, John Camp­bell 15; Ja­cob Duffy 3-122).

Toss: West In­dies elect­ed to field.

Po­si­tion: Match drawn.

Play­er-of-the-Match: Justin Greaves.

Um­pires: Alex Wharf, Paul Reif­fel.

TV Um­pire: Al­lahud­di­en Palek­er.

Re­serve Um­pire: Kim Cot­ton.

Match Ref­er­ee: Jav­a­gal Sri­nath.

(CMC)