ST JOHN’S – West In­dies cap­tain Kraigg Brath­waite has praised his charges fol­low­ing their com­mand­ing 201-run win over Bangladesh in the open­ing Test at the Sir Vi­vian Richards Sta­di­um in An­tigua on Tues­day.

The home side need­ed just sev­en overs to wrap up Bangladesh’s tail on the fifth and fi­nal day to take a 1-0 lead in the two-match se­ries.

The win was set up by the Windies’ bat­ters in the first in­nings, with Play­er-of-the-Match Justin Greaves scor­ing his maid­en Test cen­tu­ry, while both Mikyle Louis and Al­ick Athanaze were dis­missed in their 90s in a to­tal of 450 for nine de­clared.

Their fast bowl­ing quar­tet of Ke­mar Roach, Alzarri Joseph, Jay­den Seales and Shamar Joseph then re­strict­ed the vis­i­tors in both in­nings to help set up the com­fort­able vic­to­ry.

Speak­ing in a post-match in­ter­view, Brath­waite said the bats­men and the bowlers both played cru­cial roles in the win.

“I think the way we bat­ted in the first in­nings, to put up 450 runs, I think that was great.

“Nor­mal­ly here in An­tigua, day one es­pe­cial­ly, is usu­al­ly favourable to the bowlers. The first two ses­sions the pitch was ex­treme­ly slow and had a fair bit of mois­ture, and the way we went about it and got up to 450 with guys get­ting some big 50s and Justin Greaves get­ting a hun­dred, I think that re­al­ly put us in a good po­si­tion to press for the win,” Brath­waite said.

“I al­so think the fast bowlers worked fan­tas­tic to­geth­er. I think Ke­mar Roach was the leader of this bowl­ing unit on or off the field. To see how they went about it, I think the dis­ci­pline was su­perb and we had some ag­gres­sion, and I think that is im­por­tant in Test crick­et.

“Every­one has dif­fer­ent skill sets in the fast bowl­ing unit and I think they have a very, very bright fu­ture,” he added.

With the sec­ond Test sched­uled to be­gin on Sat­ur­day in Ja­maica, Brath­waite said the guys were re­lieved to have a Test win un­der their belts fol­low­ing tough se­ries loss­es to Eng­land and South Africa ear­li­er in the year.

“A lot of learn­ing would have tak­en place com­ing from the Eng­land tour where we didn’t win a Test match and that was tough, but I al­ways tell the guys to keep learn­ing.

“Test crick­et is all about learn­ing and com­ing from the last Test against South Africa to here, we’ve seen some im­prove­ments…” Brath­waite main­tained.

“It was good to see, good to get a Test win and we have to con­tin­ue work­ing hard.”

CMC