Roston Chase feels West Indies may have got the balance of their bowling attack wrong for the second Test against Pakistan at the Queen’s Park Oval. On a pitch where spinners took 20 of the 30 bowler wickets that fell over the Test match, West Indies played just one frontline spinner to Pakistan’s two.
Ordinarily, Chase himself would have been able to bowl long spells of offspin in support of the left-arm spinner Jomel Warrican, but a finger injury that he has been nursing since before the series restricted him to a bit-part role with the ball.
“I don’t want to say we misread the pitch, but we didn’t think that it was going to spin as much from so early,” Chase said in his post-match press conference, after Pakistan won by eight wickets to level the two-Test series 1-1. “So I think that that is where the problem came in.
“And also my injury, I think that we thought I would have been able to bowl a lot more, but rushing back from the injury a bit too quickly, and I was still in some pain in terms of bowling. So I think that was a bit of a dilemma for us.”
Chase said West Indies could have found a way to make room for an extra spinner – the uncapped Joshua Bishop was the other frontline option in their squad – though not at his own expense, given he was still able to contribute in his primary role.
“Captaining the side, I would never leave myself out to play anyone else,” Chase said. “If I am outright injured and can’t play, then I would sit out. But once I can still play as a batsman, I will always play. But I do think that we could have made room for an extra spinner, but it wouldn’t have been [instead of] myself at all.”
Looking back at the way the Test match panned out, Chase felt West Indies’ fast bowlers took too long to recognise that conditions wouldn’t allow them to blast out Pakistan’s batters, and that they would need to bowl with more patience and create pressure by drying up the runs. Replying to West Indies’ first-innings 344, Pakistan scored 266 for 2, at more than four runs an over, by stumps on day two.
“I think that we took a bit too long to adapt to the conditions,” Chase said. “The wicket wasn’t one that was assisting the fast bowlers as much like [the] Brian Lara [Stadium in Tarouba, which hosted the first Test].
“So I think it’s a case where we needed to be more patient and just try to defend one side of the wicket and just try to squeeze them as much as possible into making a mistake, but we still tried to blast them out per se, and I think that gave them too many runs before we really locked it down and stuck to the plan and were a bit more disciplined.”