Holder wants Windies to quickly forget SA thrashing

SYDNEY, Australia (CMC) – Captain Jason Holder says West Indies are confident of still making the second round of the World Cup of the World Cup, and has urged his side to quickly forget yesterday’s thrashing at the hands of South Africa.West Indies entered the contest at the Sydney Cricket Ground on a run of two victories but collapsed to a 257-run defeat – the joint worst-ever defeat in World Cup history.
The loss left the Windies with just four points from four games with two games remaining in Group B, but Holder said the Windies needed to remain positive.
“Going forward into the next game, I think we need to take the positives from this game and try to go into (the game against) India with full confidence,” he said.
“We need to put it (loss) behind us as quickly as possible but we need to look at our errors we made in this game, that’s important, and look for ways in which we can improve.
“We are very confident we can make the quarter-finals. We just need to play good cricket against India first and then take on UAE in our last game.”
Asked to bowl first, West Indies tied down the Proteas batsman initially but captain AB de Villiers arrived to lash his 20th one-day hundred, a scintillating 66-ball unbeaten 162, to transform the game.
He smashed 17 fours and eight sixes as South Africa scored 261 runs in the last 20 overs of the innings to pile up 408 for five – the second highest total in a World Cup and the highest-ever on Australian soil.
In reply, West Indies capitulated for 151 all out off 33.1 overs, with Holder top-scoring with 56 off 48 deliveries.
The young skipper said de Villiers’ knock had made the difference in the game.
“I thought we did pretty well early on in the game with the ball. I thought we were keeping the run rate down pretty good but then AB just took the game away from us,” he pointed out.
“If you take away his innings, it was 150 runs he put on the board and it would look a totally different score if you were to take away that innings. Having said that, we dropped chances and didn’t make it easy for ourselves.”
He added: “I think psychologically, chasing 400 it was always a tough task. I thought if we had held one or two chances in the end there, I think we could have brought it down to 350 which would have been an easier total to look at.
“We obviously have some areas we need to improve on. One is our death-bowling and we really need to look at it but again, AB played an exceptional innings and I must give him credit.”
West Indies face India in their next game in Perth next Friday.