JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Holder thrilled with Bravo, team effort

by

20161018

DUBAI–Cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er has hailed Dar­ren Bra­vo's eighth Test cen­tu­ry in dif­fi­cult fi­nal day cir­cum­stances and said his en­tire team had showed plen­ty char­ac­ter, de­spite their 56-run de­feat to Pak­istan in the day/night open­ing Test here yes­ter­day.

Bra­vo stroked 116 at the Dubai In­ter­na­tion­al Sta­di­um as West In­dies, chas­ing 346 for vic­to­ry, came up short on 289 in their sec­ond in­nings to fall 0-1 be­hind in the three-Test se­ries.

"It was a qual­i­ty in­nings and he bat­ted re­al­ly well in both the first and sec­ond in­nings," Hold­er told re­porters af­ter­ward.

"I think he showed a lot of ma­tu­ri­ty in both those in­nings. He spent some time, he gave him­self a re­al­ly good chance to get a score and you could see the de­ter­mi­na­tion on his face and in his ex­pres­sions, and even his body lan­guage I thought it was very, very pos­i­tive.

"Hope­ful­ly we can con­tin­ue in this vein and keep Dar­ren Bra­vo lead­ing our bat­ting."

Un­beat­en on 26 at the start with West In­dies on 95 for two, the left-han­der sur­vived the loss of vet­er­an part­ner Mar­lon Samuels for four to the first ball of the day, to keep Pak­istan at bay.

All told, he faced 249 balls in a marathon 6-� hours at the crease, and struck ten fours and a six. He an­chored half-cen­tu­ry stands with Ros­ton Chase (35) and Ja­son Hold­er (40 not out), to car­ry West In­dies' vic­to­ry bid late in­to the fi­nal ses­sion.

How­ev­er, with per­haps one of his few false strokes of the in­nings, he mis-timed a dri­ve back to Yasir Shah in the fi­nal hour to be sev­enth out at 263, and Hold­er said that dis­missal was the turn­ing point in the con­test.

"That was ob­vi­ous­ly a cru­cial mo­ment there. Bra­vo was the set bats­man, he'd played beau­ti­ful­ly up un­til that point but it was tough com­ing out of the rough with Yasir Shah," he ex­plained.

"I thought he bowled re­al­ly well, he was very, very chal­leng­ing and he made it dif­fi­cult for us to score and al­so de­fend.

"If you look back at it, you see a lot of things in hind­sight but ob­vi­ous­ly at the mo­ment when Bra­vo got out we would've prob­a­bly asked him to go on a lit­tle longer."

West In­dies were al­ways up against it once they con­ced­ed a lead of 222 on first in­nings af­ter Pak­istan had piled up a mam­moth 579 for three de­clared in their first in­nings.

How­ev­er, with leg-spin­ner De­ven­dra Bishoo tak­ing eight for 49, the Windies bun­dled out Pak­istan for 123 in their sec­ond in­nings to open up the game.

Hold­er said the bat­ting ef­fort from his side in both in­nings and the bowl­ing in the Pak­istan sec­ond in­nings, was cause for en­cour­age­ment.

"I am ob­vi­ous­ly dis­ap­point­ed that we lost. At the end of the day it is still a loss but hav­ing said that, there are lots of pos­i­tives I can take from this game," he point­ed out.

"One thing is I am re­al­ly proud of the guys for the way they fought. I must com­mend the guys, they stuck it straight through to the end, all the bowlers gave a re­al­ly big ef­fort on a pitch that didn't give much as­sis­tance to them, and I can't re­al­ly fault the ef­fort of the guys.

"I just think it was a very, very good team ef­fort. Un­for­tu­nate­ly we didn't get over the line and un­for­tu­nate­ly we didn't save the game but there are a hell of a lot of pos­i­tives to take from this game."


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored