West In­dies cap­tain Kraigg Brath­waite does not be­lieve that the sev­er­al rain de­lays in the drawn first Test match against South Africa saved the home side from de­feat.

Heavy show­ers re­sult­ed in sig­nif­i­cant play­ing time be­ing lost at the Queen’s Park Oval, with on­ly 15 overs be­ing pos­si­ble on Wednes­day’s first day, while on­ly two hours were pos­si­ble on the penul­ti­mate day.

Speak­ing to mem­bers of the me­dia fol­low­ing Sun­day’s fi­nal day, Brath­waite said the Windies were al­ways pos­i­tive about pulling off a suc­cess­ful run chase.

Set at 298 to win, the West In­dies reached 201 for five be­fore both teams agreed to a draw in fad­ing light.

Brath­waite said his troops were pos­i­tive in their chase and be­lieved they would have pulled it off had it not been for the rain stop­pages.

The home side has gone 32 years with­out a Test se­ries win over South Africa.

“It was sure­ly the plan. Ob­vi­ous­ly, it’s quite easy to think that you can just come and de­fend and bat out the day, but I told the boys to trust the plans and ful­ly bat in what­ev­er it is.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, Al­ick [Athanaze] showed it from his ap­proach in terms of sweep­ing the ball, be­cause I know he is a good sweep­er. and for him to go out and do it, I think that was great,” Brath­waite said.

“… I wouldn’t say that we es­caped. We had 100 runs to win, and we were ful­ly con­fi­dent we would have made them if the rain didn’t fall, al­though the game would have been a lit­tle dif­fer­ent if we didn’t have the rain breaks.

“But we were ful­ly con­fi­dent we could get the runs, and we pret­ty much showed it, so we didn’t get away be­cause of any rain,” he main­tained.

Brath­waite said the guys were in high spir­its head­ing in­to Thurs­day’s sec­ond Test in Guyana.

“The more crick­et we play, the bet­ter. When you’re play­ing a test match, you’re more in­tense for longer pe­ri­ods, and I think the more we do it, that’s im­por­tant. Once we con­tin­ue to do that as a group and you con­tin­ue to see guys im­prove, that’s how we get bet­ter.

“The more crick­et we play against dif­fer­ent op­po­si­tion, I think that’s how we will im­prove as a team and as bat­ters,” the cap­tain said.

Mean­while, Athanaze, who fell just short of his first Test cen­tu­ry for 92, said he felt good to know his ef­fort helped save the West In­dies from de­feat.

While he ad­mit­ted he was dis­ap­point­ed in not mak­ing it to three fig­ures, he said the re­sult was more im­por­tant to him.

“The re­sult of the match was ac­tu­al­ly more im­por­tant than get­ting the hun­dred. I mean, I would have loved to get a hun­dred; I’m re­al­ly hun­gry for that hun­dred. It’s a lit­tle un­for­tu­nate that I didn’t get it, but at least I’m get­ting clos­er,” Athanaze said.

“Get­ting runs is al­ways a con­fi­dence boost­er for a bat­ter. In con­di­tions like this, you know, a game sce­nario where you have to save the Test match, it will do a lot for a young play­er and the team.” (CMC)