SOUTHAMP­TON, Eng­land – Right-han­der Shamarh Brooks yes­ter­day re­it­er­at­ed the im­por­tance of West In­dies’ bats­men pulling their weight in the up­com­ing Eng­land se­ries, es­pe­cial­ly com­ing on the heels of in­con­sis­tent per­for­mances in the two re­cent warm-up match­es.

The tourists’ bat­ting has de­vel­oped a no­to­ri­ous rep­u­ta­tion for be­ing un­pre­dictable and is ex­pect­ed to come un­der the mi­cro­scope in of­ten dif­fi­cult Eng­lish con­di­tions, against the prodi­gious likes of seam­ers James An­der­son and Stu­art Broad.

"The guys have been work­ing very, very hard. We know the Eng­lish bowl­ing at­tack is a good one [but] once we bat well, I think we have a very good chance," said Brooks, who has played three Tests since mak­ing his de­but a year ago.

"Spend­ing time at the crease will be key and as long as we ap­ply our­selves, spend some time out there, it will get eas­i­er. We need as a bat­ting unit to stand up in this se­ries and make the dif­fer­ence.”

Front­line bats­man pro­vid­ed some re­as­sur­ance in last week’s three-day ‘in­ter-squad’ fix­ture at Old Traf­ford as open­er Kraigg Brath­waite, Shai Hope, Brooks and wick­et­keep­er Shane Dowrich all struck half-cen­turies.

There was no such en­ter­prise in this week’s four-day game, how­ev­er, with Brath­waite, Hope, open­er John Camp­bell and Ros­ton Chase all man­ag­ing on­ly sin­gle dig­its in their on­ly knock.

Cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er, Test crick­et’s top-ranked all-rounder, strug­gled with nought, five and two in his three in­nings.

In con­trast, the Caribbean side’s pace at­tack looked sharp and ag­gres­sive and Brooks said it was crit­i­cal the bat­ting unit backed up the bowlers.

“Clear­ly our bowl­ing will be our strength, and has been for the past cou­ple of years. If you look at our bat­ting, when we do get it right as a unit we have won games,” he point­ed out.

“That’s why I’m stress­ing on the point that we need to bat well, es­pe­cial­ly against a team like Eng­land at home, who are go­ing to be very chal­leng­ing.

“The coach, I guess he would feel that way be­cause of what he saw in the last game, where the bowlers re­al­ly raised the in­ten­si­ty and we (bat­ting) fell down.

“But I still don’t feel that when we come to the Test se­ries, it will go that way. We need to ap­ply our­selves, stick to the ba­sics and stick to our game plans.”

He added: “Some of us got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to bat and spend time at the crease. It’s still a bats­man or bowlers game. Our bowlers bowled well, es­pe­cial­ly in the sec­ond game – our Test bowlers re­al­ly came with a dif­fer­ent in­ten­si­ty.

“It’s good to get out there and have a prac­tice game but I think we are back­ing our prepa­ra­tion to bring suc­cess in this se­ries.”

West In­dies ar­rived on Eng­land’s south coast on Fri­day to fi­nalise prepa­ra­tions for the open­ing Test start­ing Wednes­day, af­ter spend­ing just over three weeks at their “bio-se­cure” Old Traf­ford fa­cil­i­ty in Man­ches­ter.

They en­gaged in in­tense train­ing and net ses­sions while un­der­go­ing a two-week quar­an­tine, be­fore turn­ing their at­ten­tion to the two prac­tice games.

Brooks said the buildup to the se­ries had been ad­e­quate and West In­dies were champ­ing at the bit.

“I think we’ve had enough time to pre­pare. We’ve been here three, four weeks now, we’ve had two prac­tice games, and I think the in­ten­si­ty in those prac­tice games was de­cent,” he said.

“But hav­ing said that, we just came off a first-class sea­son as well, so it’s not like we are out of the woods in terms of not be­ing in crick­et form.

“I know three months [in lock­down in the Caribbean with­out crick­et] might seem like a while but I think the four weeks we have had here would be enough time to get our­selves back in shape and ready for this Test se­ries.”

CMC