Jason Holder agrees with West Indies teammate Carlos Brathwaite - England did carry on bowling too long in the first Test when they should have shaken hands on the draw.
Late on day five with four Windies wickets down, Holder and Nkrumah Bonner were well set to see out the draw, but Joe Root refused to call time on his bowlers inside the final hour. Instead he waited until there were five balls left and it was a mathematical impossibility that England could win the game.
Speaking as a pundit on BT Sport, the white ball all rounder Brathwaite called it ‘disrespectful’ that England carried on, suggesting that they could take the remaining six wickets in a flurry on a docile pitch. "If I were Kraigg Brathwaite (no relation) or any of the other senior players in that dressing room I would have found it a bit disrespectful that in the last hour,” he said.
“Would England have done that if it was an Ashes Test or against India, New Zealand or Pakistan? I think the answer is no, so why have they done it against us? The West Indies are a better team than we give them credit for.”
And in comments that will add some spice to the 2nd Test in Bridgetown, Holder, who had a good first game scoring 45 and 37 not out plus taking three wickets, is right behind his countryman.
“I definitely know what Carlos said and I would be wrong if I probably didn’t agree with him,” said Holder. "I thought they went on way too long. I thought from the last hour I told Bonner if we batted for five overs they would probably call it, but I was really surprised they went on that long. Joe was well within his rights to stretch it that long, and in a sense I didn’t mind because it gave the English team more overs in their legs. They had to toil a lot longer.”
If the row serves to motivate the West Indies players at their traditional fortress of the Kensington Oval, then Brathwaite may just have played his part from the UK. It wasn’t all that long ago that the Windies were described as ‘mediocre’ by the then chairman of the ECB, Colin Graves, ahead of the 2015 tour.
His comments came back to bite as the home side triumphed by five wickets on the same ground in Barbados to level the series. But this time the England captain has been resolute in his defence of his tactics, and insisted he would do just the same if he gets the chance this week.
“I've seen those comments and I think it was slightly unfair to say that,” said Root. “I have a huge amount of respect for every team we play against and we want to give ourselves every opportunity to win the game. I think he mentioned we wouldn't have done that against Australia, well we did do that against Australia at Lord's – we will always try to give ourselves the best opportunity to go and win every test match.
“It was a nice opportunity for Jack Leach to take four of five wickets, so you can open up wounds for the rest of the series as well. I don't think there was anything wrong with our approach at all. Given the opportunity to do it again we'd go about it the same way.”
