ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – West In­dies head coach Daren Sam­my has main­tained that bat­ting coach Floyd Reifer’s ex­per­tise and ded­i­ca­tion is one of the main rea­sons be­hind the team’s bat­ting im­prove­ments.

The West In­dies pro­duced a record-break­ing bat­ting per­for­mance against Sri Lan­ka in the open­ing Test on their way to reg­is­ter­ing an em­phat­ic in­nings and 217-run vic­to­ry on Sun­day, their first Test win in al­most two and half years.

Amir Jan­goo scored a bril­liant 233 and cap­tain Ros­ton Chase made 194, with the two shar­ing the largest ever sixth-wick­et part­ner­ship in Test crick­et his­to­ry of 401 runs.

Their ef­forts helped the Windies post a mam­moth to­tal of 626 for nine de­clared – the first time the re­gion­al team scored over 600 runs in an in­nings since 2012.

Speak­ing in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Sam­my said Reifer’s im­pact could not be de­nied.

He said while Reifer had been crit­i­cised heav­i­ly in the past for the team’s bat­ting woes, there had been sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in the last few years in all for­mats be­cause of his ef­forts.

“It’s a com­bi­na­tion of Floyd Reifer and the will­ing­ness of the play­ers, the work eth­ic of the play­ers. We’re here to pre­pare them as coach­es, but buy­ing in to the prepa­ra­tion, buy­ing in­to the dif­fer­ent as­pects and tech­niques and ar­eas of im­prove­ment and com­mit­ting to the work.

“But I have to sin­gle out Floyd Reifer for that. He gets a lot of flack when we’re not bat­ting well, the cam­eras fo­cus on him all the time, but he has nev­er fal­tered. He’s been strong in his mes­sag­ing, his work eth­ic is amaz­ing, and he con­tin­ues to put in the work with the bat­ters, so I’m go­ing to give him his flow­ers,” Sam­my said.

“Just see­ing in the Test are­na and even in the One Dau In­ter­na­tion­al for­mat as well, the amount of hun­dreds we’ve had over the last three years, it’s been slow but it’s progress and that’s what we’re about, try­ing to build on progress.”

By the num­bers

233 is the sec­ond-high­est in­di­vid­ual score in Tests be­tween West In­dies and Sri Lan­ka, on­ly be­hind the hard-hit­ting open­er Chris Gayle’s 333 in Galle in 2010. This is the first dou­ble cen­tu­ry on West In­di­an soil since for­mer cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er’s un­beat­en 202 against Eng­land in Bridgetown in 2019.

401 The stand be­tween Amir Jan­goo and Ros­ton Chase is the sec­ond-high­est for any wick­et for West In­dies, sec­ond to the 446-run sec­ond-wick­et part­ner­ship be­tween for­mer leg­ends Gary Sobers and Con­rad Hunte against Pak­istan in Kingston in 1958. The pair bat­ted for 100.2 overs - the fourth-longest for West In­dies, where da­ta avail­able.

This al­so hap­pens to be on­ly the sec­ond 400+ part­ner­ship for any wick­et against Sri Lan­ka af­ter the 467-run third wick­et stand be­tween Mar­tin Crowe and An­drew Jones in Welling­ton in 1991.

626/9 d This is the first in­stance of West In­dies scor­ing 500-plus runs in a Test in­nings since scor­ing 507 against New Zealand in Dunedin in De­cem­ber 2013, while fol­low­ing on. The last time they scored 500 or more in their first in­nings was when they made 648/9 d against Bangladesh in Khul­na in No­vem­ber 2012; the last time they man­aged 500 or more in a home Test was in Ju­ly 2012 when they hit 522 against New Zealand, al­so in North Sound, An­tigua.

This is al­so the high­est ever to­tal for West In­dies against Sri Lan­ka sur­pass­ing 589/9 d in Galle in 2010. (CMC)