'The mental attitude needs to change,' says Weekes

Sir Everton Weekes, the former West Indies batsman, has urged the current side to show more mental toughness after their two crushing defeats in the first two Tests against South Africa.

West Indies were hammered by 189 runs at Johannesburg, and by an innings and 65 runs at Durban. They now face a tough task to get anything out of the final two Tests, at Cape Town and Centurion Park.

"The mental attitude needs to change," Weekes, who scored 4455 runs in 48 Tests, told Nation Sports. "The players are not bad but they are down now. They need to pull themselves together."

Weekes, though, is confident that West Indies won't suffer a 4-0 whitewash, like they did four years ago when they went down 5-0 against South Africa. "We're still building and we have a lot of good young players," insisted Weekes. "I believe we can come to the fore in a year or two."

He added: "Players will emerge more as the team progresses. We have seen some positives even though we've lost. There has been some good batting. Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan showed lots of grit and determination in the last Test."

Weekes, however, pointed out the bowling and fielding as areas of concern. "Allround as a team we have not been good. The bowling has not been consistent and we dropped too many catches," he said. "I can't see us bouncing back enough to win any Tests but we can draw. To win Tests you need 20 wickets and if we look at bowling, 20 wickets seem hard to get on these pitches."

He concluded: "But all is not lost, we've got to go through this period. When you're rebuilding, these things will happen."