West Indies finished second-best to Australia, the No. 1 One-Day International (ODI) team, in the final of the tri-series on Sunday (June 26), but the Jason Holder-led side has a lot of positives to take forward. Despite all the noise surrounding the stand-off between the board and the players before and after the team's World T20 triumph earlier in the year, it was the sport that took centre-stage during the last 24 days, reiterating the fact that West Indies, as a team, still had a lot to offer.
Holder reminisced on what was a successful campaign for a lowly-ranked team like his, lauding particularly the impact of Kieron Pollard. The big all-rounder, playing in ODIs for the first time in nearly two years since the tour of India which the team boycotted midway in 2014 over payment issues, was the home side's second-highest scorer in the series with 205 runs, and also bagged five wickets in the seven fixtures.
"I thought Kieron Pollard coming back into the West Indies team did a really good job, not only with the bat and the ball, but his presence in the dressing room, his experience counted for a lot. Things like that, we really need around our cricket. Hopefully we can have him in the dressing room going forward," Holder said on Sunday (June 26).
West Indies meant business from the onset of the series, beating South Africa in the tournament opener and eventually dumping them out of the reckoning for the final. With three wins and three defeats in the six league-stage games, they advanced to the final, leaving Holder with a lot of optimistic thoughts about the future.
"Credit must go to the whole group. A lot of people didn't expect us to get this far. We've put up some pretty good performances leading up to this final. And still in this final, we've got some things to shout about. It's just important that we keep improving. Improvement is the name of the game. We just have to keep building and moving our way up the rankings," he said.
Holder also had a few words of praise for his two centurions - Marlon Samuels and Darren Bravo - who orchestrated two out of the three wins for the side. "We asked one of the top four batsmen to put up a big hand each time and go on and get a big score for the team. We got two hundreds in this series, from Marlon Samuels and Darren Bravo. Credit must go to them.
In the tournament finale, West Indies fell short in chase of 270, but the captain rued the injury to Shannon Gabriel, that played a key role in letting Australia put on a challenging total. Gabriel had sent Steven Smith and Glenn Maxwell packing in the same over, the 31st, and tipped the scales in his team's favour. However, his injury an over later meant Holder didn't have his wicket-taking speedster to bowl at Matthew Wade, the Australian wicket-keeper whose unbeaten half-century helped Australia regain control and score 78 runs off the last 60 balls.
"I felt we conceded 20-30 too many. We lost Shannon Gabriel as well, his overs at the end were crucial. With the bat, we fell away and didn't recover after a decent start. The wickets of Smith and Maxwell changed the game; credit to Shannon," Holder said
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