Stuart Law, the Windies head coach, believes his team had a reasonable outing against India on the first day of the second Test at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket stadium in Hyderabad.
After winning the toss and electing to bat first, the visitors were reduced to 113/5 within the first 40 overs of play. However, a 174-ball 98* from Roston Chase and a defiant 52 from returning skipper Jason Holder helped them recover to end the day at 295/7.
“We had a decent start – each batter got off to a reasonable start, we just needed one or two of them to kick on and get big hundreds,” said Law after the day’s play on Friday, 12 October.
“We sat down and spoke, we did not want to shy away from the hard work. We wanted to stand up and make a statement, come back and fight hard. To our credit, with Roston, Shane Dowrich and Jason Holder really showed that fight and quality to get us up to a reasonable day. It would’ve been nice to be only four-five wickets down, but from the position we were in, we would take it.
“Bishoo can score runs, he can also keep his wicket intact. Ideally, the magic number of 400 in the first innings is what we targeted. 350-400 will be ideal for us at the moment,” said Law, who is set to step down from his role in January 2019.
“Then, with Shannon Gabriel’s express pace and Holder’s bounce and swing, if we can get early breakthroughs and expose the Indian middle order to put them under pressure against the new ball, that would be an ideal world.
“Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world. We would need to work our socks off to get to 350. Hopefully, there are still plenty of runs out there for us. Roston’s job now is to stay not out. If he can get to 130-140 and marshall the strike, it will be ideal.”
