Phil Sim­mons, the West In­dies head coach, didn't hold back in lav­ish­ing praise on his side for bat­tling through against all odds in their win over Bangladesh in the first Test. He par­tic­u­lar­ly sin­gled out "be­liev­ing in them­selves and trust­ing their abil­i­ty" as key take­aways from the Test. Nkrumah Bon­ner, the 32-year-old, who was a vi­tal part of the match-al­ter­ing stand with Kyle May­ers that turned the game on its head, help­ing West In­dies to chase down a record 395 for a win, re­it­er­at­ed that con­fi­dence was para­mount.

"I think it is im­por­tant to be con­fi­dent, pa­tient and will­ing to fight for your coun­try," Bon­ner said on Tues­day. "When you make runs it gives you con­fi­dence a lot. It was my de­but. I gained a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence and it pre­pares you for the rest of the se­ries."

Bon­ner scored a res­olute 85, which came off 245 de­liv­er­ies, but most im­por­tant­ly kept May­ers com­pa­ny, who kept the runs com­ing in swift­ly. Al­though he missed out on a cen­tu­ry, he was not both­ered; for him, play­ing his part in the team's win­ning cause meant more, and on de­but.

"It is a big achieve­ment for me. In my child­hood dream, it was some­thing I want­ed to ac­com­plish. I don't have words to re­al­ly say how I feel but all I can say is that vic­to­ry is an amaz­ing feel­ing. Per­son­al mile­stones are al­ways good, but ob­vi­ous­ly, we know we do every­thing for the team. It would have been good to make a 100 on de­but but it wasn't meant to be. I am hap­py that we won the game."

Bon­ner, how­ev­er, con­ced­ed to have been dis­ap­point­ed not to have made his de­but ear­li­er than he did when West In­dies played both in Eng­land and in New Zealand where he was part of the squad.

"I did feel slight­ly dis­ap­point­ed not play­ing in Eng­land and New Zealand. But ob­vi­ous­ly, you are part of the team and I gave my full sup­port each and every time. Ba­si­cal­ly, I had to wait for my chance to per­form. I'd say that I en­joyed the ex­pe­ri­ence in Eng­land and New Zealand, it helped me to pre­pare men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly even more for this Bangladesh se­ries."

The win in the first Test ups the ex­pec­ta­tions from the pub­lic all the more giv­en the de­ter­mined fight they've put up in Chat­togram. How­ev­er, the mid­dle-or­der bats­man seems more than clear with the mind­set need­ed for the sec­ond Test in Dha­ka.

"There might be ex­pec­ta­tions from the pub­lic but for us it is some­thing that we are paid to do. We are paid to go out there and per­form every time. We are just stick­ing to the process and be­liev­ing in our­selves. We are hav­ing a clear mind each time. We start from ze­ro again. We have to go back to the process, we have to prac­tice and pre­pare well. It is go­ing to be a dif­fer­ent wick­et, ground and every­thing. It is im­por­tant for us to as­sess again. Go­ing over the process­es and en­sure we do well.

"Ob­vi­ous­ly It has been a while we have won away from the Caribbean and we are try­ing our best to make this one best. We re­al­ly want those back home proud. We are not try­ing to be over­con­fi­dent or take any­thing for grant­ed. Bangladesh is a good team, es­pe­cial­ly in their own con­di­tions. We know it is go­ing to be tough, but we are look­ing for a big­ger chal­lenge."

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