BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) – A frustrated captain Jason Holder on Thursday offered a sobering assessment of his side’s performance, after they were humbled by 186 runs in the third and final One-Day International to suffer another series whitewash.
Speaking after the defeat at Kensington Oval, Holder said the team had been found wanting and are now under pressure to improve quickly.
“Obviously it wasn’t up to scratch. I thought we were very poor in the field, we gifted a lot of free runs,” the 24 year old said.
“The bowlers were decent, just that I thought we were taken off our length in the middle and then we came back strongly in the end. But having said that, we didn’t put up a good fight with the bat at all.”
West Indies arrived here earlier this week off the backs of two defeats at the Sir Vivian Richards Cricket Ground in Antigua. In both games, they had chances to push England but squandered them on each occasion.
They were completely outplayed on Thursday, however, with England equalling their highest-ever total against the West Indies in scoring 328 off their 50 overs, and then bundling the hosts for a near record low 142.
“[I am] a bit frustrated. I felt as though – although we weren’t getting the wins – we were moving in the right direction in terms of improvement,” Holder lamented.
“We need to string together a strong collective game and we haven’t been able to do that in the series.”
The series loss represented the second straight for the regional side, following on from their similar 3-0 whitewash at the hands of Pakistan last October in United Arab Emirates.
West Indies have now won just one ODI in their last 10 outings but Holder said the squad needed to remain optimistic and focused on improvement.
“There’s only one place we can go and that’s forward. We’ve just got to get it right,” the all-rounder said.
“We’ve got to be a lot tighter in the field, sharper in the field and take our chances. If you look back right throughout the entire series, we’ve let a good few chances slip and batsmen capitalised on these chances so it’s just a situation where we need to improve on our fielding and move forward with the bowling and batting.”
He added: “We have to remain patient. It’s still a young group and we definitely need to perform. Everybody is trying to make their mark on the international circuit. We are still very green in a sense and we just need to improve and learn quickly.”
