WELLINGTON – West Indies head coach Ottis Gibson said yesterday his side had made their own luck and earned a draw in the first Test, but will be looking to build on the confidence they gained from their fightback for the remainder of the series against New Zealand.
Gibson was speaking following a training session ahead of the second Test which opens tomorrow [today 5:30 p.m. Eastern Caribbean time] at the Basin Reserve in the New Zealand capital.
The training was disrupted by rain, restricting the team to fitness and fielding drills, as well as the use of the indoor nets.
“The great golfer Gary Player once said that the harder he worked, the luckier he got,” said Gibson. “We worked hard on the fourth day of the first Test and we felt we earned our bit of good fortune on the final day.
“If we had capitulated on the fourth day like we did in the first innings and didn’t take it into the final day, we would not have had that luck. It works both ways. New Zealand would have felt unlucky, but they know the conditions better than we do. They knew when the rain would have been coming or not.”
Reflecting further on the performance of the team in the first Test, Gibson said: “I think, like I say to the players, sometimes preparation is everything and I don’t think we had ideal preparation going into the Dunedin Test.
“The lack of prepartion showed in our first two innings – our bowling first and first innings batting – where to be fair to New Zealand, they played well over the first two or three days and then we fought back really well which was very pleasing.
“It gives us more confidence going into the second Test and we are a more settled group – a few guys still have sniffles and colds – but we’re full of confidence from the way we fought from the second innings in Dunedin.”
Gibson said although Shivnarine Chanderpaul
and Marlon Samuels did not play a major part in the second innings fightback, there was great satisfaction that other players had shown enough application to transform the fortunes of the side. (PR)
