Adams: Down but not out

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.