Ottis Gibson: "We will take our wins, but we also know that one [series] win doesn't make us a champion team." © Philip Spooner Enlarge
Related Links News : Gayle happy with win but not with batting Report : WI win 4-1 after Zimbabwe batsmen fail Players/Officials: Ottis Gibson Matches: West Indies v Zimbabwe at Kingstown Series/Tournaments: Zimbabwe tour of West Indies Teams: West Indies

West Indies coach Ottis Gibson has said he is elated with his maiden one-day series victory - 4-1 over Zimbabwe - and is pleased that batsmen apart from Chris Gayle played important roles in the success. West Indies lost the Twenty20 international and the first ODI but bounced back to win four matches in a row.

"Any time you win a series it is obviously a special moment. Zimbabwe aren't rated highly, but neither are we so we couldn't have taken them for granted and we didn't take them for granted," Gibson told Nation News. "We knew they were going to put up a good fight, but we sort of steeled ourselves for that. We prepared ourselves well for winning. Everybody in the dressing room, especially all those guys who were in Australia when it was really difficult, are obviously very happy now with what we have done and achieved in this series."

Gibson, a former West Indies fast bowler who stepped down as England's bowling coach to take up his current post, admitted the losses in the Twenty20 international in Trinidad and the opening ODI in Guyana, had put his team "under a little bit of pressure".

"The home fans were obviously expecting better from us and we had to dig deep," Gibson said. "It was good to see, apart from Chris [Gayle], other batsmen making contributions and getting us over the line. Narsingh Deonarine did it on a couple of occasions and [Denesh] Ramdin got an opportunity to go up the order and bat and show us what he can do."

Gibson said a key problem was the team's inability to win by a big margin when the opportunity presented itself: West Indies lost six wickets while chasing small targets in each of the last two ODIs.

"Of course, we talked about winning handsomely and we were in a position to win handsomely two days ago [last Friday] and we sort of let it slip and the same thing again today [Sunday] where we probably could've lost two or three wickets and won easily," Gibson said. "But at the end of the day, a win is a win for a team like this which has found winning difficult over the last couple of series.

"We will take our wins, but we also know that one [series] win doesn't make us a champion team. We got to keep growing as a team. We got to keep developing and learning from the little silly mistakes that we make so that when we get into other tough series, we would know how to handle ourselves in those situations."