BAS­SETERRE – West In­dies T20 cap­tain Shai Hope has called for im­proved ex­e­cu­tion from his team af­ter they suf­fered a six-wick­et loss to Aus­tralia in the third T20I in St Kitts on Fri­day night, leav­ing them trail­ing 3-0 in the five-match se­ries.

De­spite a com­pet­i­tive bat­ting per­for­mance, the West In­dies once again fal­tered in key mo­ments, al­low­ing Aus­tralia to chase down the tar­get with ease. Hope ex­pressed frus­tra­tion with his side’s in­abil­i­ty to de­liv­er un­der pres­sure, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the bowl­ing de­part­ment.

“We just need to ex­e­cute bet­ter. It’s been too long now. The way our bowlers are ex­e­cut­ing, we cer­tain­ly need to have a look at it. And it boils down to that skill that we speak of. The bowlers do pos­sess skill, but we need to ex­e­cute. If we’re not ex­e­cut­ing, then we’re wast­ing our time.”

The West In­dies start­ed strong­ly with the bat, post­ing a chal­leng­ing to­tal, but Hope ac­knowl­edged that their fail­ure to fin­ish strong­ly cost them dear­ly.

“We could cer­tain­ly take that start from the bat up­front. It’s some­thing we al­ways speak about, whether we bat or bowl. It’s great to see con­sis­ten­cy in the ball play from the bat­ters, but we’re fal­ter­ing in the back end, where we’re usu­al­ly pret­ty good. It’s some­thing we need to re­vis­it and have a look at.”

With two match­es re­main­ing, start­ing with the fourth en­counter Sat­ur­day night, Hope em­pha­sised that the team still has pride to play for and must ral­ly to­geth­er to sal­vage the se­ries.

“Three-two looks way bet­ter than 4-1 or 5-0. We still have a lot to play for every sin­gle time we cross that line. We’re try­ing to make sure we’re rep­re­sent­ing that badge, rep­re­sent­ing the peo­ple in the West In­dies. We know how tough it is, but every­one needs to stay to­geth­er.”

CMC