Source:Daily Express
“We have to keep improving.
That was the call from West Indies bowling coach James Franklin following their five-wicket loss, via the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) method, against Sri Lanka in the first One-Day International of a three-match series at Pallekele on Sunday.
Batting first on Sunday, the Windies rallied from 54 for three to reach 185 for four after 38.3 overs when rain ended their innings early. Set a revised target of 232 off 37 overs, the hosts reached 234 for five with 31 balls to spare.
“I think we can be better in all three skillsets,” said Franklin, the former New Zealand all-rounder. “We’re on a journey as an ODI team, and we have to keep improving and try to keep ourselves moving up the rankings.”
“We’re coming here to Sri Lanka, and they have always been a team that is difficult to beat in their conditions. We know we’ve got a huge challenge, but we know that there were certain moments in the game when we were on top. We had control at certain stages in the first game, and we’ve just got to do that for longer periods,” Franklin added.
With the ball, the Windies assistant coach wants to see better execution while he wants the batters to show good intent against the Sri Lankan spinners.
“We’re 1-0 down in this three-game series, and we’ve got a couple of days to reflect and to work on improvements going into the second game,” he said.
Franklin continued: “From a batting point of view, we’ve just got to show good intent against these Sri Lankan spinners. They are high quality, and we know in this part of the world, having a good strategy against spin goes a long way. And it comes down to us being confident with our method and executing it on the day and putting Sri Lanka under pressure with both bat and ball.”
“While yesterday (Sunday) was disappointing, we know that we’re still in this series, and we know that we’ve got a huge game coming up on Wednesday (tomorrow), and we’ve just got to execute our skills for longer,” he added.
“We’re on a journey as an ODI team, and we have to keep improving, keep trying to move ourselves up the rankings in terms of the ICC table,” he explained.
“We know what surface we’re going to get; it’s going to be a very similar surface again, so we’re going to prep well today and tomorrow and make sure that we’re a little bit better with our execution or better with our execution with the ball,” he added.
The second game bowls off at 5 a.m. (T&T time) tomorrow while the final match takes place on Saturday at the same time.