Chris Gayle has re­it­er­at­ed his de­sire to con­tin­ue as West In­dies cap­tain de­spite his side's sev­en-wick­et loss to South Africa in­side four days in the third Test here Tues­day. The de­feat, which spelled a 2-0 se­ries de­feat for Gayle's men, was the lat­est in a long string fail­ures for the re­gion­al squad but the Ja­maican open­er said he was not ready to quit. "Def­i­nite­ly I want to go on. Be­fore the se­ries I was brought in­to a meet­ing and had a dis­cus­sion about my fu­ture and gave them my every­thing so we will see what hap­pens," Gayle said.

"I am still will­ing to go on. I am still push­ing to go on. I still have a lot to of­fer in that par­tic­u­lar area." The 30-year-old, who has led West In­dies in 20 Tests, said there were prob­lems of sup­port which need­ed to be dealt with. "There are a few is­sues I need to sort out be­fore I progress," Gayle said. "When you are not get­ting the sup­port there is go­ing to be a prob­lem. So we need to ad­dress that as quick­ly as pos­si­ble and see how well be can come up with a bet­ter sys­tem."

The left-han­der has now played 88 Tests and passed 6 000 runs in the just con­clud­ed Test at Kens­ing­ton Oval. How­ev­er, his form was be­low par in the se­ries as he man­aged just 159 runs in five in­nings at an av­er­age of 31. He said, how­ev­er, that lead­ing the squad had been a boon to his bat­ting and his per­son­al de­vel­op­ment. "Since I have been cap­tain, I didn't even no­tice it but my av­er­age in Test crick­et has been over 50 which is a tremen­dous achieve­ment," Gayle said. "It has helped me be­come a more ma­ture per­son as well. I am will­ing to move for­ward and have bet­ter re­sults for West In­dies crick­et." (CMC)