MEL­BOURNE–Aus­tralia Aus­tralian se­lec­tor Mark Waugh has launched a scathing at­tack on the West In­dies crick­et team ahead of the sec­ond Test match sched­uled to start on Box­ing Day in Mel­bourne.

Waugh has al­so lashed out at se­nior mem­bers of Ja­son Hold­er's out­fit fol­low­ing their ig­no­min­ious de­feat against Aus­tralia in­side three days in the open­ing Test.The for­mer Aus­tralian crick­eter has sin­gled out top or­der bats­man Mar­lon Samuels and wick­et­keep­er bats­man Di­nesh Ramdin, ques­tion­ing their roles in the strug­gling side.

Waugh is pre­dict­ing that if the West In­dies do not lift their game, the re­main­ing two Tests would be over in three days as well."He is a prob­lem," said Waugh, re­fer­ring to Samuels.

"There is def­i­nite­ly an is­sue with the se­nior play­ers in that group. With­out know­ing ex­act­ly what is go­ing on in the dress­ing room, you can see there is no team ca­ma­raderie there or will­ing­ness for the se­nior play­ers to dri­ve any in­ten­si­ty."

He added: "Their game aware­ness (in the first Test) and tac­ti­cal­ly they were very naive. If they do that again in Mel­bourne there will be the same re­sult. The same in Syd­ney."

West In­dies have made a hor­ri­ble start to their tour of Aus­tralia and are un­der pres­sure to im­prove ahead of the Mel­bourne Test.They lost their open­ing four-day tour match to a Crick­et Aus­tralia XI by ten wick­ets and then were ham­mered in­side three days by an in­nings and 212 runs in the open­ing Test in Ho­bart.

Waugh, who has played 128 Test match­es for Aus­tralia scor­ing 8029 runs with 20 cen­turies, says Hold­er's play­ers have aban­doned him. "Ja­son Hold­er the skip­per has no one around him," said Waugh, who has been de­scribed as one of the world's most el­e­gant stroke mak­ers.

"Hold­er is the cap­tain but he doesn't seem to have con­trol or back-up from the se­nior play­ers.

"(Di­nesh) Ramdin, the wick­et­keep­er, they need more out of him with the bat and tac­ti­cal­ly."

Ex­plo­sive in­nings from Gayle, Bra­vo help Rene­gades to open­ing win

BRIS­BANE–West In­di­ans Chris Gayle and Dwayne Bra­vo played vi­tal roles which lift­ed Mel­bourne Rene­gades to a sev­en wick­et win over Bris­bane Heat in the third match of the Big Bash League yes­ter­day.

Gayle paved the way for an ex­cel­lent chase with an ex­cit­ing knock of 23 while Bra­vo ap­plied fi­nal touch­es as Rene­gades sur­passed their tar­get with three balls re­main­ing, in re­sponse to Heat's 180 for five.

Gayle's 23 came from 16 balls with two fours and two six­es while Bra­vo hit a four and two six­es in scor­ing 22 from nine balls in late fire­works that in­spired an ide­al sea­son open­er at the Gab­ba.Bra­vo al­so picked up a wick­et for 30 runs and pro­vid­ed good sup­port to bowlers Chris Tremain, Nathan Rim­ming­ton and Xavier Do­her­ty who all had ex­cel­lent spells.

Chris Lynn with 35 and Benn Cut­ting 30 not out were the top scor­ers for heat.How­ev­er, an­oth­er West In­di­an, Lendl Sim­mons, was among the lead­ing scor­ers col­lect­ing 29 from 25 balls with two fours and two six­es.Sim­mons was bowled by Xavier Do­her­ty just as he was start­ing to look dan­ger­ous.

A pow­er­ful sec­ond wick­et part­ner­ship of 111 be­tween Aron Finch and Cameron White pre­ced­ed Bra­vo's late hit­ting.Finch, the Rene­gades skip­per, hit a top score of 65 while White struck 55 as Rene­gades picked up an im­por­tant win on the road.

CMC