Adams: Down but not out
London-Jimmy Adams regards his first defeat as West Indies captain as a challenge for him and his team
Tony Cozier
04-Jul-2000
London-Jimmy Adams regards his first defeat as West Indies captain as
a challenge for him and his team.
'At some point you're going to lose a game and your mettle is going to
be tested in how you react and how you bounce back,' Adams said
yesterday, reviewing the two-wicket, three-day loss to England in the
remarkable second Test at Lord's on Saturday.
It was the West Indies' first reversal since Adams took over as
captain on Brian Lara's resignation last March. They had won four of
the previous six Tests, including the first in this series by an
innings and 93 runs.
'I share everybody's disappointment but my outlook is one for the
series,' Adams said. 'We've come here to win a cricket series. There
are still three matches to go and I'm still confident that we have the
talent, the desire and the commitment to get the job done. '
He described the tour as a 'learning process' for a team including
several players new to England.
'The thing with learning is you want to know you can pick yourself up
after having a setback, that, having fallen down, you can dust
yourself off and come back stronger for the experience.'
Adams thought long and hard before answering my question as to
whether, in hindsight, he would have done anything differently during
the Lord's match, especially on the last day as England just got up to
their winning goal of 188.
'From here, probably not,' he eventually replied. 'I'm not saying that
every decision I made would go down in everybody's book as the best
decision ,but they all had cricketing reasons behind them and, at this
point in time, I stand 'by them.'
Adams was chided in some quarters ' mainly the quarter with some
critical West Indian spectators for bowling Franklyn Rose too long,
especially during England's match-winning eighth wicket partnership
and not using Reon King enough.
King bowled eight overs for 17 runs, against 23.5 by Courtney Walsh,
22 by Curtly Ambrose and 16 by Rose.
'King had been warned twice (by umpire John Hampshire for running on
the pitch) and he was struggling when he delivered wide of the
stumps,' Adams explained. 'He said his rhythm wasn't there and he was
struggling.'
The captain said he reserved the pavilion end for Walsh and Ambrose,
his two main bowlers, and depended on Rose to 'chip away a few wickets
at the other end and try to keep it as tight'as possible'.
'I thought it would have been a mental strain on Reon to bring him
back at the same end again with the margin getting smaller and
smaller, having already been warned,' Adams said.
He placed blame for the loss on the batting. It was an obvious
observation for a team bowled out for 54 in the second innings, but
Adams went back to the first innings for an earlier source.
'In the first innings, we were 50 to 60 runs short of what we should
have got after the start we had,' he said. 'At 170 for two at tea (on
the first day), you're looking at 350, 370, possibly 400. We fell
below that and the 54 compounded it.
'You've got to give credit to the bowlers for carrying the game as far
as they did but, in both innings, we were short of what we should have
got to turn the match our way,' he added.
The Test series now takes a month off for the triangular series of
One-Day Internationals that starts Thursday with the West Indies
playing Zimbabwe at Bristol in the first day-night international in
England.
Adams was nonplussed by the interruption. It was described by
England's stand-in captain, Alec Stewart, as an untimely break to
England's momentum, gained at Lord's.
'It's not something I sit down and say it's good or bad,' Adams said.
'It just is. We now have to refocus on One-Day cricket and, in a
month, to revert again to the longer game.'
The West Indies will be without Ambrose, who has returned to Antigua
until the end of the One-Day series, and Sherwin Campbell, who has
flown home to Barbados to be at his wife's side for the birth of their
second child. He comes back in time for Sunday's match against England
at Lord's.