Nicholas Pooran: ‘One of the best innings I have played for West Indies’
West Indies captain happy to close out the chase, but says lacklustre performance in the field was “a bit disappointing”
Nicholas Pooran might have won the Player-of-the-Match award for his unbeaten 39-ball 74 in the third T20I against Bangladesh, but he feels Kyle Mayers’ 55 off 38 balls at the top of the West Indies chase made his job simpler than it might have been otherwise.
Set 170 to win the three-match series, West Indies were 43 for 3 just after the powerplay, and Mayers, who had opened the batting, was on 18 from 16 at that stage. But with Pooran for company, Mayers opened up, and the next 22 balls he faced went for 37 in an 85-run stand for the fourth wicket.
“I was telling Kyle how well he was batting out there,” Pooran said afterwards. “It was a top innings. He was putting away the loose balls. The bowlers were under pressure even though they were on top of the game. We want to continue to do that as a batting unit. He made my job easier, to build the partnership with him.
“Our template was always to put the bowlers under pressure early in the over. Kyle put away anything loose from their offspinners. I think I fed off that today. In T20s, a partnership is the most important thing.”
Faced with a lot of spin up front, Mayers said he needed to balance aggression with good decision making when approaching the chase. The first eight overs were bowled by spinners: Nasum Ahmed and Mahedi Hasan sent down three each in the powerplay, and Shakib Al Hasan and Mosaddek Hossain bowled the next two before the first sighting of a quick bowler in Mustafizur Rahman in the ninth.
It was the first time Bangladesh had bowled spinners in the first eight overs of a T20I innings. And it worked, keeping West Indies down to 56 for 3.
