GEORGE­TOWN–Bowl­ing coach Rod­dy Es­t­wick says West In­dies are aware of where they went wrong in their last game against Aus­tralia and will have to pull to­geth­er in or­der to cor­rect those is­sues.

West In­dies beat South Africa by four wick­ets in the open­ing game of the Tri-Na­tions Se­ries last Fri­day but then pro­duced a meek bat­ting per­for­mance in their sec­ond out­ing against World cham­pi­ons Aus­tralia, to slump to a six-wick­et de­feat last Sun­day.

"It's a col­lec­tive thing. We're all in it to­geth­er. We wouldn't say it is the bowlers or the bats­men that have let us down," said Es­t­wick, who re­cent­ly re­placed bowl­ing leg­end Sir Curt­ly Am­brose in the po­si­tion.

"We haven't played well as a team in the last game and we know the ar­eas we need to im­prove. We need to get part­ner­ships, it's 50-over crick­et. "Once we can get part­ner­ships and some­one in the top four gets a big score, then we'll turn it around. There's no doubt about that."

In the open­ing en­counter, West In­dies bowlers led by resur­gent off-spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine, un­der­mined the Pro­teas with a ca­reer-best, six-wick­et haul on a slow, low track at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um here, lim­it­ing them to 188 all out. And af­ter be­ing dis­missed for a dis­ap­point­ing 116 against the Aussies, Nar­ine again proved a hand­ful as the Windies man­aged to claim four wick­ets be­fore go­ing un­der.

Es­t­wick, a for­mer Bar­ba­dos Pride coach and West In­dies A seam­er, said he had put a huge em­pha­sis on dis­ci­pline among his bowlers. "That is some­thing I have stressed big on that we must re­duce the ex­tras and re­duce the bound­ary balls. If you look at the ex­tras, there were five in the first game which was very, very good and there was one ex­tra in the last game so those are ar­eas we're try­ing to im­prove," Es­t­wick point­ed out.

"If we re­duce the bound­ary balls as well � we're try­ing to stop the op­po­si­tion from gain­ing mo­men­tum go­ing for­ward � so we're try­ing to cut out that first-ball four which gives the mo­men­tum go­ing in­to the over or the last-ball four which the mo­men­tum go­ing in­to the next over.

"So the play­ers know what we're try­ing to do and once we con­tin­ue to work, we can achieve it." All three teams will turn their at­ten­tion to the St Kitts leg of the tour­na­ment where match­es will be played at the Warn­er Park venue. And Es­t­wick said this change would call for a re­cal­i­bra­tion on the part of the bowlers.

"Guyana is a dif­fer­ent sur­face, a dif­fer­ent pitch and when we go to St Kitts it will be a dif­fer­ent pitch was well and you've got to rise to the chal­lenge as a team and as a col­lec­tive unit and that's what we're work­ing to do." West In­dies take on the Aussies again in their next game slat­ed for next Mon­day.

CMC