WELLING­TON – Cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er says he wants “clear minds” from his play­ers for the de­ci­sive sec­ond Test be­gin­ning here Fri­day (6 pm, Thurs­day, T&T time), es­pe­cial­ly in the wake of the sham­bol­ic first Test de­feat last week.

Speak­ing on the eve of the con­test at the Basin Re­serve, the 29-year-old all-rounder stressed the im­por­tance of turn­ing the page on the in­nings and 134-run de­ba­cle in Hamil­ton, and pro­duc­ing their best crick­et over the next five days.

And he ar­gued that “cloud­ed mind­sets” would on­ly be in­im­i­cal to the Windies’ chances of win­ning the Test and lev­el­ling the se­ries.

“We’ve got to be con­fi­dent. There’s no point com­ing in­to this game if we’re not con­fi­dent,” Hold­er told re­porters here.

“We’ve all got a part to play and we’ve all got a role to play. And more or less, we’ve just got to slow it down. We’ve got to be a lit­tle bit more pa­tient, a lit­tle bit more clear­er than we were in the first Test match, and just make sure that we head in­to this game with a good frame of mind.

“I think that was one of the main things that I stressed to the guys – even al­though we may have had our per­son­al views on where we went wrong in the last game, it is to more or less have a clear mind go­ing in­to this sec­ond [Test].

“I don’t think it would help us much if play­ers came in­to this game with cloud­ed mind­sets so [we have to] be clear and I al­ways tell the guys to en­joy the mo­ment. You’ve just got to en­joy what you’re do­ing too.”

With just a short turn­around be­tween games, West In­dies have had pre­cious lit­tle time to re­group fol­low­ing the heavy de­feat, but Hold­er said there had been nu­mer­ous can­did con­ver­sa­tions about the Sed­don Park per­for­mance and the im­prove­ments that were need­ed.

Point­ing to the bat­ting de­part­ment, Hold­er said it was one of the main ar­eas of con­cerns, es­pe­cial­ly against the back­drop of to­tals of 138 and 247 in the last Test.

“[There have been] quite a few dis­cus­sions we’ve had over the last cou­ple days and we hope that the dis­cus­sions will bring some re­sults in­to fruition here in this Test match,” Hold­er ex­plained.

“It is ob­vi­ous­ly very im­por­tant for us. We kind of let our­selves down in that first Test match and we all were dis­ap­point­ed by that per­for­mance but we’ve got to keep go­ing.

“There’s this last Test match to play and so much to play for. There’s our per­son­al pride to lev­el the se­ries and then ob­vi­ous­ly the points in the World Test Cham­pi­onship.

“I can’t re­al­ly fault the prepa­ra­tion over the last cou­ple weeks, months and even the last cou­ple years we’ve been to­geth­er. It’s just a mat­ter for us to start de­liv­er­ing.”

He added: “I think our bowlers have held their hands up most of the time over the years . Yes, New Zealand scored 500-odd – it hap­pens – but it hasn’t been a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence for us. But def­i­nite­ly the bat­ters need to stand up.”

How­ev­er, Hold­er de­fend­ed the qual­i­ty of his West In­dies side, con­tend­ing the re­cent de­feat was not an ac­cu­rate re­flec­tion of their abil­i­ty.

“We’ve seen it, the world has seen it, this group has done some out­stand­ing things over the last cou­ple years,” Hold­er ar­gued.

“We’ve had a few of those per­for­mances (de­feats) be­fore too but you look at the abil­i­ty and what this team can pro­duce and it’s there. We’ve done it be­fore and the guys have just got to re­mem­ber that they’ve done it be­fore.”

CMC