S/A coach unhappy with Bourda pitch

GEORGETOWN: South Africa coach Ray Jennings hit out at the Bourda wicket after West Indies piled up 543 for five wickets declared against his side in the First Test. “There are two kinds of pitches which are not good for cricket,” he said. “They are green pitches when bowlers can bowl anywhere and take wickets and lifeless pitches where batsmen can show poor technique and get away with it.”

Jennings praised his side’s effort, adding: “Day one was tough and I wasn’t happy, but we came back well.” South Africa resumed yesterday on two without loss after skipper Graeme Smith accepted an offer of bad light from the umpires during Pedro Collins’ opening over. The stars for West Indies were Wavell Hinds and new skipper Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who made 213 and 203 not out respectively. They shared a stand of 284, the highest for any wicket by a West Indies pair against South Africa.

“You don’t expect to be given runs by South Africa. It was up to us to go out there and do our jobs as batsmen,” Chanderpaul commented. West Indies coach Bennett King believes consistency is the key to future success by the team. “If we want to compete day in day out for a whole Test series we need to keep reproducing those performances in the second innings, the next Test and the following Test,” he commented. “It is no good being able to do things just on a first innings basis in Test cricket. The game goes for five days.” King played down the sponsorship dispute which cost Brian Lara, Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan and four other players their places in the squad. “It has happened before in Australia and other places ... we all have to be patient with it,” he added.