Carlos Brathwaite blames lack of situation awareness for the loss

West Indies T20 international skipper, Carlos Brathwaite stated that the lack of situation awareness is what cost West Indies the match as they were bundled out for 115 against Pakistan in the first of the three-match T20I series.

A couple of matches ago, this was the same team that smashed 244 against India in the USA, however, Brathwaite said that it just didn’t come off for Windies on the day. “We have ebbs and follows ups and downs, today it just didn’t come off for us,” Brathwaite said. “I don’t think we assessed the conditions quickly enough. The majority of the shots didn’t show situation awareness. Poor execution, good bowling, you know we are an aggressive exciting team, two games ago we scored 240 odd and today we scored 115.”

Imad Wasim bagged 5 wickets recording the best bowling figures by a Pakistani spinner in T20Is – 5/14. “I don’t want to just say we didn’t bat well, credit must go to Imad Wasim who bowled fantastically, anytime you get 5 for 14 in an international match you must be doing something right, and to get it in a T20 International is even better,” the visiting skipper said.

“But these things happen. We are an aggressive team and I won’t tell any of the guys in the room to lose their aggression, it is just a matter of being more situation aware going into tomorrow’s game. Imad had a head start on us, playing CPL for Jamaica Tallawahs. He knew our batsmen, and we knew him as well, and planned for him, and on the day his execution was better than ours,” he added.

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After early wickets it was Dwayne Bravo’s partnership with Jerome Taylor for the second wicket that  took the team total past 100 but wasn’t enough to challenge Pakistan. “Anytime a team is 20-odd for 5, they need a herculean effort by two-three guys,” he remarked. “I know we had that today from Bravo getting 50-odd, Jerome Taylor played a fantastic innings and to be honest, defending 115 is always going to be difficult. We tried our best, it didn’t quite come off today, our batters didn’t play very well, the key was getting early wickets. I tried my best as captain to switch around the bowlers and mix it up so that batsmen don’t get accustomed to one bowler. That didn’t work and fantastic work from Khalid (Latif) and Babar (Azam).” Brathwaite said.

The 28-year old feels that a score of 140-150 would have been a match-winning one in that wicket. “We didn’t execute it the way we wanted to, on some other day those same shots could have gone for boundaries and sixes and if we were 45-50 odd for 1 after six overs setting a beautiful platform to go on and score 140-150 which looked like would have been a winning total on the surface today,”

He said that there will be ups and downs in professional sport and that the world champions will bring a better game in the second T20I. “Because we had one bad game it does not dent the belief we had in the 11 guys that took part, we understand that in professional sport you have ups and downs, today was a definite down for the team. We didn’t play like world champions, we didn’t play like the No. 1 team in the world, and the result shows, well played to Pakistan and tomorrow we will bring a better game,” the skipper concluded on a positive note.

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