KINGSTON – If the pitch at Sabi­na Park is any­thing to go by, Bangladesh’s bats­men are in for an­oth­er tough test from the West In­dies’ fast bowlers when the sec­ond Test bowls off in Ja­maica, on Sat­ur­day.

Dur­ing a pre-match in­ter­view on Fri­day, West In­dies Test cap­tain Kraigg Brath­waite in­di­cat­ed that the pitch con­tained some grass, which he be­lieved would pro­vide as­sis­tance to the pac­ers.

In the open­ing Test in An­tigua, the Windies’ fast bowl­ing quar­tet of Ke­mar Roach, Alzarri Joseph, Jay­den Seales and Shamar Joseph took all 18 wick­ets to fall in the match.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly it’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent ground. The sur­face has on a bit of grass which is good to see, ob­vi­ous­ly a lot of mois­ture around, a lot of rain, so we have to start fresh this game,” Brath­waite said.

“It’s good to see the cov­er­ing of the grass on the sur­face, but at the end of the day that’s just the sur­face. We still have to go out there and bowl well, ob­vi­ous­ly take the catch­es and bat well and put runs on the board, so we’re look­ing for­ward to do­ing that.”

The home side holds a 1-0 lead in the two-match se­ries and a win or draw would se­cure their first Test se­ries vic­to­ry for the year fol­low­ing tough loss­es to Eng­land and South Africa.

Brath­waite said it was im­por­tant that the West In­dies close out the se­ries with a win to car­ry that mo­men­tum in­to 2025 where they will play sev­er­al Test se­ries.

“It’s very im­por­tant. You can’t ever take any Test se­ries for grant­ed and it’s very im­por­tant that we end this year strong.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly next year we have a lot of Test crick­et to play as well, so it’s very cru­cial for us,” Brath­waite in­sist­ed.

“The first Test is gone, that’s his­to­ry, so we have to come and start right back over as a bowl­ing unit and a bat­ting unit, but we are look­ing for­ward to it.”

The Test match will be a his­toric one for Brath­waite, as he will be­come the first West In­di­an to play in 86 con­sec­u­tive Test match­es.

In ac­knowl­edg­ing the achieve­ment, the cap­tain said he hoped he would be a play­er that young crick­eters would want to em­u­late.

“I’m very, very ho­n­oured and priv­i­leged to be here and very thank­ful. It’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty that I’ve had for over 10 years and I’m very thank­ful for it,” Brath­waite said.

“To be the most is good. I just want to be an ex­am­ple for guys to fol­low and I’m re­al­ly ex­cit­ed about it.”

CMC