ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – De­spite a dis­ap­point­ing loss to Eng­land in the sec­ond One Day In­ter­na­tion­al on Sat­ur­day, West In­dies white ball head coach Daren Sam­my says he is see­ing some im­prove­ments in the re­gion­al side’s play.

Af­ter post­ing a com­pet­i­tive 328 for six from their 50 overs at the Sir Vi­vian Richards Sta­di­um, the West In­dies were un­done by a bril­liant cen­tu­ry from Eng­land cap­tain Liam Liv­ing­stone, as the vis­i­tors scored 329 for five to lev­el the three-match se­ries.

In an in­ter­view fol­low­ing the match, Sam­my ex­plained that while the Windies’ bowl­ing per­for­mance was not up to scratch, there were sev­er­al pos­i­tives that could not be ig­nored.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly when you put 328 on the board you ex­pect to win. How­ev­er, that is the beau­ty about in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et.

“…I thought, yes Liam Liv­ing­stone played a bril­liant in­nings to get his team home, but I thought as a bowl­ing group our ex­e­cu­tion was re­al­ly off, hence los­ing to a record chase here at An­tigua,” Sam­my said.

“But we did some re­al­ly good things to­day. Shai Hope scored an­oth­er hun­dred, third most hun­dreds by a West In­di­an; Kea­cy Car­ty bat­ted [well], Sher­fane Ruther­ford got his fourth con­sec­u­tive half cen­tu­ry, the way Matthew Forde bowled, Ros­ton Chase af­ter be­ing put un­der pres­sure in the sec­ond over, the way he came back, so we did some re­al­ly good things.

“I think we were right in the game un­til the last 10 overs where I think they scored 100 off sev­en overs and that’s not good enough. But as a team, we’re un­der­stand­ing where we’re at and the small steps that we have to take to im­prove,” he added.

With the third and fi­nal ODI sched­uled to be played on Wednes­day at Kens­ing­ton Oval, Sam­my said the West In­dies would be go­ing all out in hopes of record­ing their sec­ond suc­ces­sive ODI se­ries win against Eng­land at home.

“We are off to Bar­ba­dos now 1-1, the ex­act same thing that hap­pened last year…but it shows that we are still far off but we are tak­ing lit­tle strides that will help us along our way with the goal that we have mov­ing for­ward.

“Bar­ba­dos al­ways sup­ports West In­dies. It is a ri­val­ry and all to play for at home. The last time the se­ries was like this head­ing in­to Bar­ba­dos we made his­to­ry and won,” Sam­my re­called.

“It’s two young teams look­ing to de­vel­op and get bet­ter in ODI crick­et and all to play for. so I want the fans to come out and sup­port and in re­turn we as the West In­dies crick­et team have to give you all some­thing to smile about in Bar­ba­dos.”

CMC