Nic Pothas, the West Indies fielding coach, on Thursday, admitted that West Indies lost the plot in the first session of the first Test itself among other things.
On injury to Holder and the day's play:
I am not in a position to discuss Jason’s injury but he felt something in Dubai in our pre-season camp. Obviously it has not settled down as much as he or the medical staff would like. He will be monitored on daily basis and we will wait and see how that pans out.
But more importantly on the day (Day One) itself, I think we could have probably started the day a little bit better and having said that Prithvi played really well early on, we probably did not execute as well as we would have liked on the plans but we dragged the game back very well and it was very, very happy on how we stuck to our guns all day long.
For Shannon (Gabriel) to come back having bowled 18 overs through the day in that heat and still be bowling 145kmph an hour… huge credit to the hard work he has done on his fitness.
To say (if) we are happy with today, we re probably satisfied with the day, but we have still got a lot of hard work to do.
On Prithvi Shaw’s debut:
Look he has had a fantastic day today, he is obviously a very exciting prospect for the future. But I think it would be a mess of me to to make a judgement call on a very good young cricketer having seen him play only once.
But certainly on today’s performance, hats off to him, a debut hundred (in) Test match cricket and hopefully he does not get too many more in this series but I look forward to seeing him in the future because he is a very exciting cricketer.
Congrats to him, he played very well today.
READ: Prithvi Shaw's debut ton headlines India's dominant day
On West Indies having one specialist spinner compared to India's three:
When it comes to selection I am only the fielding coach, I do not make such calls.
On the field opening up and Bishoo bowling early:
When you play cricket in India, it is very hot, the wicket was very good. You getting a spinner coming on in the first innings in the first day of the Test match is pretty new.
He is not going to be spinning it past the outside edge of the bat. You put two batters in who were scoring pretty freely, it is a game of chess. You do not want the game to run away from you early in a Test match.
I thought (stand-in captain) Kraigg (Brathwaite) did fantastically well today. I think I have also learnt having played against India a lot, Virat (Kohli) would do something pretty similar. It is tough conditions and what you do not want is to have a day that goes in excess of 400 or 420 because you keep fielders in attacking positions for too long.
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We had discussed this, very happy with how Kraigg has gone about the day. The bowlers stuck to the job very well.
On Shannon’s performance:
Shannon has had a fantastic year, through the series against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka he bowled quick. But the most exciting part we know is that Shannon Gabriel can bowl quick, but the most exciting part for me was at the back end of the day he was still getting it up to 145 kilometres an hour, (on) end of a very hot day on a pretty docile wicket.
The other thing is (that) Shannon’s attitude has been unbelievable where we have had a pretty young bowling attack and he has stood up as a senior player, bowled his overs and he has helped those young guys through what is a pretty tough day against some very good batters.
You got one guy (Sherman Lewis) who is making his debut and one guy (Keemo Paul) who is playing his second Test match, so hats off to Shannon, I thought he was fantastic today.
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