Windies batsmen put in the hard yards to tackle spin
After suffering an innings defeat against India in the first Test, the West Indies batsmen requested the management to bring in local spinners to help the team prepare for the second Test.
Published : Oct 08, 2018 18:09 IST
The mercury soared to 39 degrees on Monday morning, but the West Indies cricketers braved the heat to hit the nets. After all, it didn't want a repeat of the humiliating defeat in the first Test against India.
Keeping in mind how Kuldeep Yadav put them in a spot at the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium, the West Indies team management called up a few local spinners to bowl at the nets on Monday. Interestingly, some of them were wrist spinners.
The plan was simple — to get the house in order before the second Test gets underway in Hyderabad next week. As the batsmen faced the spinners for more than a couple of hours, coach Stuart Law made it a point to keep a close eye on the batsmen. Every time the local spinners would put the batsmen in a spot, the coach would walk up to them and fine-tune a bit. Facing the local wrist spinners, the West Indies batters struggled initially, but as the day progressed, they slowly got better.
It has been learnt that the West Indies players had a long and freewheeling discussion at the team hotel on Sunday, where they have come up with a roadmap for the remainder of the tour.
The batsmen then requested the team management to get local spinners to help them tackle the spin demon.
“The boys stayed away from the coaching staff yesterday and had a good chat (among themselves). They came up with some plans on how they would approach the next Test match,” the coach told Sportstar after the day’s training session.
“Today, we are working on the things that the players wanted us to do. They had their meeting yesterday, and they came up to us (the coaching staff) this morning and said, this is what we want to do (play spin). ‘We want to rough up that area.’ So, I got bowlers (spinners) bowling at them and we set the field accordingly,” Law stated.
The West Indies players will be hoping to bounce back in the second Test after a productive session on Monday.