KINGSTON – West In­dies Test cap­tain Kraigg Brath­waite has blamed in­con­sis­tent bat­ting and shod­dy field­ing as the main rea­sons be­hind the home side’s loss to Bangladesh in the just con­clud­ed sec­ond Test at Sabi­na Park, Ja­maica on Tues­day.

The West In­dies were skit­tled out for 146 and 185 in their two in­nings and dropped sev­er­al catch­es through­out the match, which Bangladesh won by 101 runs to reg­is­ter their first Test vic­to­ry in the Caribbean since 2009.

The re­sult meant the two-match Test se­ries end­ed 1-1 af­ter the West In­dies won the open­ing Test by 201 runs.

In a post-match in­ter­view on Tues­day fol­low­ing his side’s de­feat, Brath­waite ad­mit­ted that their bat­ting and field­ing had been be­low par.

“We weren’t at our best for sure. We didn’t bat well this game, ob­vi­ous­ly in both in­nings and that’s an area we have to con­tin­ue work­ing at.

“It will con­tin­ue to be a chal­lenge un­til we get guys av­er­ag­ing 40 or 50. We have to work hard­er, and we have to con­tin­ue to work hard­er and find ways to ex­e­cute bet­ter, es­pe­cial­ly when we’re go­ing to play at­tack­ing shots, I think that’s one rea­son we’re falling down at times,” Brath­waite said.

“The bat­ting re­al­ly let us down, the bowlers put up a big ef­fort. We dropped a few catch­es as well, so we didn’t have a good all-around game at all.”

De­spite the re­sult, the skip­per said there were still some pos­i­tives to take from the se­ries.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly we’re dis­ap­point­ed los­ing this Test match for sure, but a lot of pos­i­tives to look at; Justin Greaves get­ting his first hun­dred, un­for­tu­nate­ly for Al­ick [Athanaze] and Mikyle [Louis] they didn’t get their hun­dreds, but they got some scores, so the guys got a bit of runs, so that was one thing,” Brath­waite point­ed out.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly the bowlers were out­stand­ing. I must com­mend Jay­den [Seales] for that phe­nom­e­nal feat here in this Test match, go­ing at that econ­o­my rate, so a lot of pos­i­tives.

“Maybe we can get bet­ter for sure with our catch­ing. We dropped a few catch­es but still a lot to take away,” he added.

With an away Test se­ries against Pak­istan loom­ing ear­ly in 2025, Brath­waite said the team would use the com­ing days to re­flect and work on ways to im­prove their game.

He said it was es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant for the bat­ters to work on their craft dur­ing this pe­ri­od.

“The next se­ries is in Jan­u­ary, so we have some time in De­cem­ber. A few guys may have some ODI crick­et but that’s ob­vi­ous­ly the time where we have to pre­pare for that se­ries.

“We have a few days off to pre­pare men­tal­ly. Ob­vi­ous­ly go­ing to Pak­istan, we have to get our plans about how we want to go about play­ing and look at some video and some footage of their last se­ries and come stronger,” Brath­waite said.

“It’s easy to give up now but we can’t give up now as a bat­ting group, we have to keep be­liev­ing, keep work­ing and keep do­ing our best.”

CMC