DURHAM, Eng­land – Vet­er­an West In­dies all-rounder Ja­son Hold­er has ad­mit­ted that they were thor­ough­ly out­played by Eng­land in the open­ing T20I here on Fri­day, which they lost by 21 runs.

Boost­ed by a sen­sa­tion­al knock of 96 from Jos But­tler, Eng­land post­ed 188 for six from their 20 overs, be­fore spin­ner Liam Daw­son’s four-wick­et haul lim­it­ed the vis­i­tors to 167 for nine.

Speak­ing in a post-match press con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the de­feat, Hold­er, who was mak­ing his re­turn to the T20 team af­ter a year­long ab­sence, con­ced­ed that the re­gion­al team nei­ther bat­ted nor bowled as well as they could have.

“I thought they played bet­ter crick­et than us to­day. I think we were prob­a­bly not at our best, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the bat.

“It prob­a­bly was a par to­tal. I think we did re­al­ly well to pull back the game af­ter the pow­er play they had, but cred­it must be giv­en to them the way they played in the pow­er play…” Hold­er said.

“Hav­ing said that, I still think we could have done a lit­tle bit bet­ter in terms of re­strict­ing them a lit­tle bit bet­ter in the pow­er play. I think some of the things that we dis­cussed in the dress­ing room, you know just be­ing able to con­trol them a lit­tle bit more out­side of the pow­er play, but if we can get one or two wick­ets in­side the pow­er play we can pret­ty much con­trol the pow­er play a lit­tle more and then the game comes a lit­tle bit eas­i­er.”

Hold­er said with the team’s pow­er­ful bat­ting line­up, he be­lieved they should have been able to chase down the to­tal.

“I think when we looked at the to­tal at the halfway mark, I think with our bat­ting line­up we should have been able to back our­selves to get it, but we didn’t play the con­di­tions well enough and we ob­vi­ous­ly fal­tered.

“…When we look back at our per­for­mance with the bat, we def­i­nite­ly have to touch up a lit­tle bit on our strike ro­ta­tion and be­ing able to score a lit­tle bit faster up front. I don’t think that we re­al­ly took on some of the matchups that we had to­day, and I think if we could just cor­rect a few of those things go­ing in­to the next game in Bris­tol, I think we’ll be in bet­ter stead,” Hold­er said.

Hold­er said even though the West In­dies missed Akeal Ho­sein, the num­ber two ranked T20 bowler in the world, he main­tained that there was enough tal­ent in the squad to still de­feat Eng­land.

“He was missed ob­vi­ous­ly, he’s one of our front­line play­ers, but I think the 11 that we put out to­day was a good enough 11 to beat Eng­land, but we just didn’t play well enough and we fell short,” Hold­er said.

CMC