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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Windies Buoyant as Second Test starts in Grenada

by

20150420

ST GEORGE'S–West In­dies head in­to the sec­ond Test against Eng­land start­ing here to­day, con­fi­dent they can build on their im­pres­sive show­ing in the open­ing match in An­tigua and come away with a vic­to­ry.Against all odds, West In­dies man­aged to pull off a draw in the first Test at the Vi­vian Richards Crick­et Sta­di­um in An­tigua last week, af­ter be­ing set 438 to win in just over four ses­sions.

The re­sult, al­beit a stale­mate, has in­stilled mo­men­tum in­to the Caribbean side's cam­paign and cap­tain De­nesh Ramdin be­lieves they can now ex­ploit what­ev­er weak­ness­es ex­ists in Eng­land's game to their own ad­van­tage."I think the char­ac­ter and the way we fought that last day and not just the last day but through­out the Test match, was fan­tas­tic, the way the guys stood up in the bowl­ing de­part­ment and the bat­ting de­part­ment," Ramdin said here yes­ter­day.

"Young Jer­maine Black­wood in the first in­nings made a fan­tas­tic hun­dred and Ja­son Hold­er, a young play­er as well–not much Test match­es be­hind his name–but he stood up and bat­ted with a lot of ma­tu­ri­ty at the end with young Roachie (Ke­mar Roach)."He con­tin­ued: "They are two guys who want to do well for them­selves and the team so they went out there and ex­pressed them­selves. Hav­ing said that, the se­nior play­ers haven't got­ten any big runs as yet and I am look­ing for­ward to those guys get­ting runs.

"You will see a big dif­fer­ence in the to­tals that we score in the match com­ing here. I'm sure they are ea­ger to get out there. The starts are there but it's just for the guys to car­ry on from cen­tu­ry to 150 and stuff like that."The Windies have made one change to their squad for the sec­ond Test, draft­ing in leg-spin­ner De­ven­dra Bishoo for left-arm spin­ner Sulie­man Benn who was in­ef­fec­tive dur­ing the An­tigua con­test.

Bishoo was dom­i­nant dur­ing the just con­clud­ed re­gion­al first class sea­son where he picked up 61 wick­ets–the sec­ond high­est tal­ly in the com­pe­ti­tion–at an out­stand­ing av­er­age of 17.The Guyanese played the last of his 11 Tests three years ago but Ramdin be­lieves he can have an im­pact, es­pe­cial­ly as the game wears on.

"On a day four and day five pitch the spin­ner al­ways comes in­to play and with his type of bowl­ing, he has a lot of dif­fer­ent types of de­liv­er­ies in his ar­moury which will help the team," Ramdin point­ed out.

"So once he gets an op­por­tu­ni­ty to­mor­row and over the next five days, he can do the job for the team which is to pick up wick­ets. He's a bowler who likes to bowl and he will en­joy this op­por­tu­ni­ty."West In­dies will de­pend heav­i­ly, though, on their faster bowlers all of whom were im­pres­sive dur­ing the first Test. The new ball pair of Jerome Tay­lor and Roach swung the ball to trou­ble the Eng­lish bats­men while Hold­er was al­so steady as the third seam­er.

While pleased with their out­ing, Ramdin said he want­ed them to be still more clin­i­cal, es­pe­cial­ly in clos­ing out in­nings."Every time you go out there and play and have a new ball in your hand as a fast bowler, as a cap­tain you want them to take ear­ly wick­ets and they have done that so far," he said.

"In this se­ries I would like them to con­tin­ue to do that and try and fin­ish off the low­er or­der. It's very im­por­tant to do that. You don't want the low­er or­der to come and cre­ate that big part­ner­ship and try and put you out of the game."As they proved in the open­ing Test, Eng­land will be more than a hand­ful. Vet­er­an right-han­der Ian Bell and rook­ie left-han­der Gary Bal­lance both got sol­id hun­dreds while Joe Root and Ben Stokes al­so gath­ered half cen­turies.

New ball bowlers James An­der­son and Stu­art Broad will lead the at­tack again with off-spin­ner Moeen Ali, draft­ed in­to the tour­ing par­ty fol­low­ing the An­tigua Test, al­so ex­pect­ed to make the fi­nal XI.Ramdin, how­ev­er, urged his side to stay calm over the next five days, stress­ing that West In­dies had the abil­i­ty to up­set the Eng­lish once they re­mained re­laxed.

"I think we need to be more pa­tient at times and show more en­er­gy in the field. Some­times we go all out when we can just re­lax a bit and en­joy the game, rather than fight­ing the game too much," Ramdin stressed."I be­lieve we are ca­pa­ble of win­ning Test match­es and once we get one in this se­ries un­der your belt it will be fan­tas­tic and put the Eng­lish on the back foot."


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