After suffering a crushing 111-run loss to Pakistan in the opening match of the ODI series, West Indies captain Jason Holder has defended his floundering side saying that they give equal priority to all formats of the game.
West Indies, the reigning World T20 champions, are currently languishing in eighth place in the Test and ODI rankings with many cricket pundits citing the Caribbean players' interests toward various lucrative T20 leagues as the reason behind their below-par performance in the other two formats.
"I think we focus equally on Test match cricket, T20 cricket and one-day cricket," Holder was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo. "Results have shown that we have done better at T20 cricket over the recent past, but we don't disregard any of the other two formats."
However, West Indies have failed to click in the preceding T20 series against Pakistan, losing all the three games against Sarfraz Ahmed's side on the ongoing tour of the UAE.
Reflecting on his side's performance, in which they were bundled out for 175 in pursuit of 287, the 24-year-old captain rued the batting collapse and admitted that batsmen need to step up in order to mount a strong comeback in the next match.
"In this situation, we need to turn things around and we really need to look at ways we can improve," he said. "Obviously one big area is the batting. We did see off the new ball [in the ODI]. It's just a matter of rotating the strike a bit better than we did today. I think once we do that we should go into the next match in better stead."
West Indies will next play their second match in Sharjah on Sunday.
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