DUBLIN – West In­dies white-ball cap­tain Shai Hope has praised his troops’ per­for­mance against Ire­land in the third and fi­nal One Day In­ter­na­tion­al (ODI) on Sun­day, which helped them lev­el the three-match se­ries and avoid los­ing valu­able points.

West In­dies post­ed their sec­ond-high­est ODI to­tal of all time, 385 for sev­en from their 50 overs, on their way to a dom­i­nant 197-run vic­to­ry at Clon­tarf in Ire­land via the Duck­worth/Lewis/Stern method.

The vis­i­tors went in­to the match know­ing that on­ly vic­to­ry would suf­fice, hav­ing lost the open­ing ODI by 124 runs while the sec­ond match end­ed in a no-re­sult due to the rain.

Speak­ing in a post-match in­ter­view, Hope said the West In­dies, who are ranked ninth in the world in ODIs could ill af­ford to drop any points.

“It was very cru­cial. We un­der­stand the im­por­tance of every, sin­gle game, es­pe­cial­ly with the point stand­ings we knew that with a se­ries loss, we would have prob­a­bly dropped sev­en or eight points, so it was very cru­cial for us to come back and lev­el the se­ries.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we didn’t get the chance to play the sec­ond game to give our­selves a chance to win, but I’m hap­py to get the guys fin­ish­ing the se­ries pret­ty strong,” Hope said.

The re­gion­al side will take on Eng­land next in a three-match ODI se­ries be­gin­ning on Thurs­day at Birm­ing­ham.

Hope said he was ex­pect­ing a stiff chal­lenge from the home side, hav­ing de­feat­ed them the last time the two sides met in the Caribbean at the end of 2024.

“We played them at the end of last year and we won that se­ries, so we know for sure that they are go­ing to be com­ing at us even hard­er this time. They want to de­fend home soil and it’s up­on us to see if we can go 2-0 up on them.

“We’re look­ing for­ward to it. This was a nice run out and it was great to get a glimpse of what the con­di­tions may be like, but again we still have to as­sess when we get there, play the con­di­tions as we see it,” Hope said.

“We know they’re go­ing to be a tough, tough op­po­nent but we’re al­ways ready to play any­one, so we’re look­ing for­ward to that se­ries and play­ing some more good crick­et.”

CMC