DHA­KA, Bangladesh – Not for the first time, West In­dies’ bat­ting has come un­der the mi­cro­scope, af­ter post­ing a pal­try 122 in their six-wick­et de­feat to Bangladesh in the open­ing One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al on Wednes­day.

Sent in, West In­dies start­ed bad­ly to col­lapse to 56 for five and on­ly got be­yond the 100-run mark cour­tesy of a 59-run, sixth wick­et stand be­tween top-scor­er Kyle May­ers (40) and Rov­man Pow­ell (28).

No oth­er bats­man passed 20 as sea­soned left-arm spin­ner Shak­ib-al-Hasan ripped through the in­nings to fin­ish with Man-of-the-Match fig­ures of four for eight.

In­ter­im skip­per Ja­son Mo­hammed af­ter­wards urged his bats­men to ex­er­cise more pa­tience, es­pe­cial­ly in the mid­dle overs against the spin­ners.

“It was a lit­tle bit dif­fi­cult. The seam­ers start­ed off pret­ty well but the spin­ners re­al­ly put the stran­gle­hold on us,” Mo­hammed said.

An­dre Mc­Carthy bats dur­ing his in­nings of 12 in Wednes­day’s open­ing ODI.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly with Shak­ib it was a lit­tle bit dif­fi­cult for us to score and he got some cru­cial wick­ets.

“They bowled well and got the ball to move a lit­tle bit. We al­ways knew they were com­ing with a bal­anced at­tack – three seam­ers and two spin­ners.

“We have to give our­selves more time. Ob­vi­ous­ly it’s dif­fi­cult to score in the mid­dle with the spin­ners. I think ne­go­ti­at­ing that part of the in­nings is go­ing to be more cru­cial for us and ob­vi­ous­ly we need to play that pe­ri­od of bowl­ing a lit­tle bit bet­ter.”

May­ers, who was one of six debu­tants in the con­test at the Shere Bangla Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, agreed more was need­ed from the bats­men.

“The bats­men need to buck­le down a bit longer and read the sit­u­a­tion a bit longer and hope­ful­ly put a bet­ter score on the board so the bowlers can fight,” the left-han­der point­ed out.

The to­tal was the sec­ond low­est for the Caribbean side against Bangladesh, on­ly bet­ter­ing the 61 they man­aged in Chat­togram 10 years ago.

And left-arm spin­ner Akeal Ho­sein, who ex­celled with three for 26 from a 10-over spell, said the at­tack need­ed larg­er tar­gets to bowl at.

“I think we def­i­nite­ly need to put on a big­ger score,” said the debu­tant.

“Hav­ing said that, I do think we bowled well so it’s just to give the bowlers some­thing to work with. Hope­ful­ly that hap­pens in the next match.”

Ho­sein bowled su­perbly, con­ced­ing on­ly two bound­aries while send­ing down 44 dot balls.

The high­light of his spell came in the 14th over when he bowled open­er Liton Das for 14 with one that pitched on mid­dle and spun to hit the top of off-stump, as the bats­men de­fend­ed clue­less­ly.

“With the score that we had to work with, I think the bowlers put their hands up and showed a good per­for­mance,” Mo­hammed said.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly Akeal was the stand­out on his de­but with three cru­cial wick­ets and be­ing very eco­nom­i­cal as well, so I was very hap­py with the bowlers to­day.”

De­spite the in­ex­pe­ri­ence of the bat­ting line up, Mo­hammed said they were ca­pa­ble of much bet­ter per­for­mances.

“We are in­ex­pe­ri­enced in terms of bat­ting but I think they are ca­pa­ble bats­men. It was just our first out­ing [and] the wick­et was a lit­tle bit dif­fi­cult. They are ca­pa­ble of do­ing the job so hope­ful­ly next game we can put up a bet­ter bat­ting per­for­mance.”

(CMC)