With the Caribbeans undoubtedly needing a change in their fortunes to win the last Test against Proteas, the focus has fallen on the West Indian team’s lower order. The Caribbeans enter the Test at Newlands trailing 0-1 in the 3 Test series.
In the starting Test, Caribbean batting was dreadful but the 22 years aged opener Kraigg Brathwaite and pracrticed crusader Marlon Samuels reinstated some sense of gratification in the 2nd Test, when they fashioned high quality tons. Even then, they crumbled from 231runs for two during the 2nd session on the penultimate day, to 275 runs for the loss of 9 wickets, when rain enforced an early end.
Skipper Denesh Ramdin said his boys were having knowledge that the lower order needed to give more and were concentrated on doing this over the next 5 days.
Ramdin said that the way Kraigg Brathwaite and Marlon Samuels performed with the bat was very heartning. The Proteas bowlers bowled quite well and they coped with it. West Indians are disheartened in the lower order that they did not exploit on that start. But he also said that they compared to their 1st game they played well in 2nd so hopefully they can take from the 2nd going into the 3rd.
Ramdin is one of the villains. He collected just 38 runs in 3 innings on the tour and 43 runs in his previous 5 innings. In his 1st series as captain against New Zealand last June, he was culpable of getting starts but failing to continue.
Left-hand stalwart Shivnarine Chanderpaul is also failing to score. He is not getting score in the tour match and has since got together 32 runs from 3 innings in the previous two Tests. Ramdin admitted that both he and Shivnarine Chanderpaul were under the focus.
They would not be pushing themselves. Caribbean team confidence is growing at the moment. They had a very slow start to the tour so they are expecting that they can continue to build that momentum.