Garner urges WI batsmen to form partnerships

The Windies have batted poorly the entire series, scoring over 300 once and bowled out under 200 twice.

Speaking to the media before a West Indies training session yesterday, Garner urged his players to occupy the crease.

He said, “The longer you spend in the middle the easier the batting becomes. You will like to see the fellas batting long and doing it effectively.

Partnerships are important to any cricket game.” India hold an unassailable 2-0 lead heading into the fourth Test match and Garner believes the West Indies players need to dig deeper. “We always had promising players, the problems that we have is when most of the players are identified I don’t think they work hard enough and they fall away.” West Indies have had few bright moments during the series with Bajan Roston Chase and Antiguan Alzarri Joseph impressing many in their debut series for the regional team. The team manager said that regional cricket has to improve for West Indies cricket to advance. “We have challenges and the challenges that we have are great. There is nothing that can be fixed with a one-off or twooff performance. I think most of our challenges come from within the territories where the cricket is being made and what is being done at local level. What you see is what we have at regional level. If we are going to be serious about our cricket there has to be some changes and there got to be some serious moves to deal with cricket at the developmental stage.” West Indians have been playing T20 cricket in all of the top tournaments in the world but Garner believes that Test cricket will benefit West Indies cricket. “Drastic situations call for drastic measures and I think while T20 cricket is a money earner, I think if we want to be at the top of the world we have to do things a little bit differently.

Get use to playing the longer version of the game, get people to become more professional and I think if we could get them to become more professional then performances will improve.”