West Indies skipper Jason Holder admitted the fact it was a tough pill to swallow, having had to lose to India in just four days on a batting-friendly pitch at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad.
The West Indies were shot out of 127 runs in their second innings and India comfortably chased down the 72-run target they were set to clinch a dominant 2-0 series win.
The West Indies were earlier defeated by an innings and 272 runs in the first Test in Rajkot.
“Honestly, it’s hard to take it. I am trying to understand the reasons why it is happening. It’s a case where we all need to put our heads together — the management, the selectors and the players. The onus must be on the players and we must be responsible for our actions,” Holder said, as quoted by The Indian Express.
“We got to come together a little bit more and find ways and solutions to deal with the problems that we have at the moment,” he added.
When asked about the positives from this series, the 26-year old said, “It’s a tough series and we didn’t play our best cricket. We look back in the last two years and we have some good results. India is No.1 team in the world and we expected to be pushed by them. They’re quality cricket side, especially in their own backyard. We all saw some positive performances from Roston Chase. I thought Sherman was awesome.”
The all-rounder scored a handy 52 in the visitors’ first innings effort of 311 and then returned with the ball to star with five wickets as India were bowled out for 367 runs.
Holder also accepted the fact that their repeated batting failures have been an issue for quite a while now and called for the top five batters to contribute.
“You can look and honestly say we didn’t put enough runs on the board. Quite for some time now, we’ve been relatively inconsistent and that has really let us down in the recent past. We haven’t been getting the runs we’ve been looking for. “We have heavily relied on middle and lower half which is not ideal. So we need to rectify at the top. The guys in the top five have to put hands up and come to the party,” he said.
Image credit- Cricket Australia