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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Chase rues questionable calls, poor fielding in opening Test defeat

by

Sport Desk
10 days ago
20250629
West Indies Test captain Roston Chase speaking to members of the media following their 159-run defeat to Australia in the first Test at Kensington Oval.

West Indies Test captain Roston Chase speaking to members of the media following their 159-run defeat to Australia in the first Test at Kensington Oval.

BRIDGETOWN – West In­dies Test cap­tain Ros­ton Chase be­lieves the re­sult in the open­ing Test match against Aus­tralia could have been dif­fer­ent if sev­er­al con­tentious calls had gone in their favour and if their field­ing had been much bet­ter.

The home side went down by 159 runs in the first Test at Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bar­ba­dos on Fri­day af­ter an en­thralling three days of crick­et.

How­ev­er, speak­ing dur­ing a post-match press con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the de­feat, Chase, who was lead­ing the re­gion­al side in his first game as cap­tain, said du­bi­ous de­ci­sions against him­self and Shai Hope in their first in­nings changed the out­come of the match.

“This game is a frus­trat­ing one for me and for the team as well be­cause we bowled out Aus­tralia for a rel­a­tive­ly low score. We were very hap­py with that, but there were so many ques­tion­able calls in the game and none of them went our way.

“As a play­er, you’re out there giv­ing your all, fight­ing, and then noth­ing is go­ing your way, it could be heart­break­ing and break­ing a lot of mo­men­tum,” Chase said.

He said the de­ci­sions oc­curred at a crit­i­cal time in the match when he and Hope were putting to­geth­er a part­ner­ship.

“I mean you see what set bat­ters can do on the wick­et. The wick­et is one that once you get in you can get runs, but the hard­est part is to get in.

“Me and Shai Hope were go­ing well and then ob­vi­ous­ly we had some ques­tion­able calls and that re­al­ly set us back in terms of cre­at­ing a big lead on the to­tal that Aus­tralia set,” Chase said.

“…I think it was a big fac­tor in the game…be­cause me and Hope were go­ing well and then we just had some calls that went against us and we even had a catch that went against us in the first in­nings when we were bowl­ing, so you nev­er know what the score could have been, but I don’t want to harp on it.”

Chase said he felt of­fi­cials need­ed to be held ac­count­able for their ac­tions.

“On the of­fi­ci­at­ing, it’s frus­trat­ing be­cause when we as play­ers mess up, when we get out of line we’re pe­nalised harsh­ly. Some­times we’re even banned or hand­ed a mon­e­tary fine, but the of­fi­cials, noth­ing ever hap­pens to them. They just have a wrong de­ci­sion, or a ques­tion­able de­ci­sion and life just goes on.

“You’re talk­ing about guys’ ca­reers. One bad de­ci­sion could make or break a guy’s ca­reer, so I just think that it should be an even play­ing ground in terms of when play­ers step out of line and they’re pe­nalised, I think that some penal­ty should be put in place when you have bla­tant de­ci­sions go­ing against you,” the skip­per said.

How­ev­er, Chase al­so ad­mit­ted that the West In­dies pro­duced a shod­dy per­for­mance in the field, where they dropped no few­er than sev­en catch­es.

He said it was an area they would def­i­nite­ly have to im­prove on go­ing for­ward.

“It’s not nice when bowlers are putting in all the ef­fort and you’re not hold­ing the chances. There is noth­ing I can say to jus­ti­fy the guys drop­ping the catch­es.

“I mean we’ve been work­ing hard on the slip catch­es, every day we try to take at least 30 to 40 catch­es, but prac­tice and in the game is a big dif­fer­ence,” Chase ad­mit­ted.

“The ball comes off the bat dif­fer­ent­ly with a gen­uine edge than when we are prac­tic­ing, but I think it’s more of a be­lief and you al­ways have to have that be­lief when you are in the slips be­cause when one goes down, I think guys tend to get a bit ner­vous and sec­ond guess their catch­ing abil­i­ty and some­times it can throw you off.”

CMC


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