Thursday, September 2, 2010

Chris Gayle admits his West Indies team have a mountain to climb if they are to overcome Australia after they crashed to an innings and 65-run defeat in the first Test.

The tourists were bowled out for 187 in their second innings to ensure the match didn’t need to go into a fourth day.  And with the second of the three-match series taking place in Adelaide, starting in only five days’ time the Windies skipper admits his side have it all to do to avoid humiliation.

“It is must-turnaround situation that we are in at this point in time,” Gayle said. “Hopefully we can actually rebound from this disaster, this loss in three days, so we have to be positive going into the second Test match.”

It wasn’t all bad news for the Windies as 19-year-old Adrian Barath (104) overtook George Headley as the youngest West Indian to score a Test ton.

He was also the youngest man to hit a century against Australia since Sachin Tendulkar did it almost 18 years ago. And Gayle said his performance was the one bright spot in two batting calamities that saw the tourists bowled out for 228 in the first innings.

“I’m very disappointed, the batting in both innings didn’t come off, apart from Adrian Barath, he showed a lot of character.”

Aside from Barath, Dwayne Bravo (23), Denesh Ramdin (16) and Sulieman Benn (15 not out) were the only others to make it into double figures in the second innings as West Indies were humbled, losing 15 wickets in total yesterday. And Aussie skipper Ricky Ponting promised there would be no let up in the aggression shown by his side for the rest of the series.

“I spoke to the guys before the game about how I want to play from here on and how I expect the team to play and today was a big part of that,” he said. “I was trying to be as positive as we can and for us to test ourselves.”