POTCHEF­STROOM, South Africa – New cap­tain Shai Hope says he wants to see more fight­ing spir­it from West In­dies in or­der to cre­ate a win­ning men­tal­i­ty in One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als, and be­lieves the en­tire side can learn from the ex­cel­lence of Alzarri Joseph.

Speak­ing in the wake of his side’s four-wick­et de­feat to South Africa in the fi­nal ODI at Sen­wes Park, Hope said it was crit­i­cal West In­dies al­ways brought the “at­ti­tude to win” in­to each se­ries.

“Re­al­ly and tru­ly, I would like to see the at­ti­tude im­prove. I think we need to show that die-hard fight a lot longer,” Hope said af­ter pre­sid­ing over his first se­ries which fin­ished in a 1-1 draw.

“We know that win­ning is a habit and the same way win­ning is a habit, los­ing can be a habit as well so we need to find ways to turn that around and just fight as hard as you can.

“You nev­er know, crick­et is one of those games where you nev­er know what’s go­ing to hap­pen in the back end, so as long as you put that ef­fort in and you have that at­ti­tude to win, things nor­mal­ly hap­pen in your favour.”

He added: “We need to cre­ate win­ning habits and the on­ly way to do that is by win­ning games and find­ing ways to win games.”

West In­dies were splen­did in the sec­ond ODI last Sat­ur­day fol­low­ing the washout of Thurs­day’s open­er gath­er­ing 335 to post their high­est ODI to­tal in four years and high­est-ever against South Africa.

They fol­lowed up with a sol­id bowl­ing ef­fort to earn a 48-run vic­to­ry, de­spite a mag­nif­i­cent 142 from Pro­teas skip­per Tem­ba Bavu­ma, who missed Tues­day’s game through in­jury.

Need­ing to win the fi­nale here to seal their first se­ries tri­umph over South Africa in three decades, West In­dies fal­tered for 260 and then watched as Hein­rich Klaasen lashed an un­beat­en 119 to steer his side to vic­to­ry with 20 overs to spare.

Fast bowler Alzarri Joseph, who led the at­tack in the pre­ced­ing Test se­ries with 12 wick­ets, was at the fore­front again, tak­ing six wick­ets in the two match­es at av­er­age of 17, and Hope said the 26-year-old was an ex­am­ple of the ex­cel­lence West In­dies need­ed to em­brace.

“One thing about Alzarri – any time I throw the ball to him or any pre­vi­ous cap­tain [threw the ball to him], you al­ways ex­pect some­thing to hap­pen,” Hope said.

“He’s one of those guys that gives his all re­gard­less of the sit­u­a­tion and it is some­thing I think all of us as play­ers need to take a leaf out of his book.

“He’s just one of those ex­cit­ing guys who’s al­ways will­ing to learn, he’s al­ways will­ing to im­prove, he’s al­ways ask­ing ques­tions, watch­ing videos – all those things just to im­prove his game.

“So def­i­nite­ly we need to look at that and hope­ful­ly we can in­cor­po­rate it in­to every­one’s game.”

West In­dies will now turn their at­ten­tion to the three-match Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al se­ries which bowls off next week­end with a day-night dou­ble-head­er in East Lon­don.

CMC