CricInfo Home
News Home

NEWS FOCUS
Rsa in Pak
NZ in India
Zim in Aus

Domestic
Other Series

West Indies captain Carl Hooper said he was very disappointed with the result yesterday as the West Indies fell to defeat by 37 runs in the second Cable & Wireless Test against India at the Queen's Park Oval, Trinidad.

I think coming into the last day here, we really fancied our chances and it was disappointing the way we sort of ended up, 30-odd runs short, Hooper told reporters after the match.

Set a challenging 313 runs for victory, the Windies fell for 275, digging their own grave with most of the batsmen falling to false strokes rather than brilliant deliveries from the visitors.

The captain said that at no stage did he give up on the West Indies getting the runs needed for victory.

Right to the very last end, I thought that we had a chance. Thirty- odd runs is not a lot runs but you needed somebody. Shiv [Chanderpaul] maybe needed to take a few more chances but that's the game, Hooper noted.

Chanderpaul remained 67 not out as wickets fell all around him.

I thought from the outset they would try to make runs difficult to come by and that's what they did. They bowled straight and locked up both the offside and onside, He said.

The thing to do, I suppose is to capitalise on the bad balls and keep the scoreboard ticking with the singles. I think it was a bit unfortunate we lost Brian [Lara] and then almost immediately after, myself.

That set us back a whole lot and obviously put the pressure on people like Chris Gayle, who I thought played well and Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Hooper said.

Despite losing his second consecutive Test at the venue after the loss to South Africa last year, Hooper said he could find no fault with the pitch.

We had the knowledgeable experts predicting how it was going to play and so on but I thought we had a belter of a Test wicket, Hooper declared.

Coach Roger Harper also expressed disappointment with losing the Test and going down 1-0 in the five-match series.

This is very disappointing. We had a similar situation here against South Africa last year and most members of the team were here and we should have learnt from that experience and unfortunately we came up short, Harper said.

I think, you can't fault the effort. Everyone fought hard but I think we need to play a little smarter, added Harper.

He noted the batsmen's failure to carry on for bigger scores contributed to the Windies' inadequate totals of 245 and 275 in the Test.

In Guyana, we managed to put a very good total on the board. One of the things we talked about there was that batsmen that got in, got to start carrying on. I think here we didn't see that, Harper noted.

He also zeroed in on the West Indies' bowling in the first session on the opening day after India were sent in to bat.

I thought we definitely could've bowled a lot better in that first session. Had we done that, it may have meant India making 40, 50 less, Harper conceded.

© The Barbados Nation