SHAR­JAH, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates – All-rounders Kavem Hodge and Do­minic Drakes have both ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with their One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al de­buts for West In­dies.

Hodge, a 30-year-old who bowls left-arm spin and bats right-hand­ed, and Drakes who bowls left-arm seam and al­so bats left-hand­ed, fea­tured in West In­dies’ sev­en-wick­et win over the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates in the open­ing ODI on Sun­day (June 4).

“It’s an amaz­ing feel­ing,” Hodge said af­ter­wards.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, play­ing for the West In­dies is some­thing you as­pire to do from child­hood and ob­vi­ous­ly to get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do it is an amaz­ing feel­ing.”

Hodge sent down six overs for 28 runs with­out tak­ing a wick­et but said he was pleased with the spell, es­pe­cial­ly bowl­ing in the piv­otal pow­er-play.

“It was pret­ty good to get a bowl in. Ob­vi­ous­ly, bowl­ing in the pow­er-play is some­thing I’m ac­cus­tomed to so it was re­al­ly nice to get that go­ing,” he ex­plained.

“I didn’t get any wick­ets but I’m hap­py with the spell that I had. Didn’t get any bat­ting but the guys who did get a bat, I must say they did very well.

“I look for­ward to get­ting a bat next game but I’ll take it how it comes. I’m grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

Drakes, mean­while, en­tered the game al­ready with 10 Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­als to his name af­ter mak­ing his de­but in the short­est for­mat two years ago.

Hand­ed the new ball on Sun­day, the 25-year-old picked up two for 29 from nine out­stand­ing overs, a spell which helped lim­it UAE to 202 all out in the 48th over.

“It wasn’t my first game – first 50-over game for sure – but al­ways play­ing a game for West In­dies is a fan­tas­tic feel­ing,” Drakes said.

“I feel ex­treme­ly tired. It [was] 40 de­grees to­day and I think the on­ly way I got through it was be­cause of Odean (Smith) and Keemo (Paul), my [part­ners from youth crick­et]. So play­ing to­day with those [guys] was a most heart-warm­ing feel­ing.”

West In­dies take on UAE in the sec­ond ODI at Shar­jah Crick­et Sta­di­um on Tues­day, and Hodge said the ob­jec­tive was to con­tin­ue im­prov­ing through­out the se­ries.

“We want to keep push­ing the bar. That’s some­thing we’re try­ing to do in set­ting high stan­dards and keep mov­ing up and up, and ob­vi­ous­ly, com­ing out of this se­ries with a 3-0,” Hodge said.

“It’s some­thing that we’re look­ing for­ward to and just try­ing to keep im­prov­ing every game.”

CMC