Floyd Reifer backs West Indies batting rebound for Barbados ODIs

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (CMC):

West Indies batting coach Floyd Reifer believes the regional team will deliver a stronger performance with the bat when it faces New Zealand in the final two One Day Internationals at Kensington Oval.

For a second successive match, the West Indies batting line-up struggled against the visitors’ spin attack, headed by Jayden Lennox, and fell to a six-wicket loss at Providence Stadium on Thursday.

Having taken the series opener, the hosts were dismissed for 138 and 140 in the next two fixtures after being sent in to bat, leaving them 2-1 down in the five-match series.

At Thursday’s post-match media briefing, Reifer acknowledged that Guyana’s conditions were tough but insisted that did not justify the poor batting returns.

“Obviously the last two games we didn’t bat to the best of our ability, but the conditions were very challenging. Batting first in Guyana the toss is a major factor where we know the ball will spin, the pitch is slow and stuff like that, then on evenings you have the dew factor which is easier to bat.

“However, saying that, I still thought that we could have put up a better batting performance. If we had gotten anything past 200 or 210 runs, we would have made a game of it, but there is no excuse really for the batting performance that we displayed over the last couple of games,” Reifer admitted.

Pointing to the side’s batting record over the last year and a half — particularly in home conditions — he said he expects a clear lift in the series’ closing two games in Barbados.

“If you look back at the games that we played in the past year and a half we’ve been batting really well in this format …We have two more games left in the series and we go to Barbados and two bad batting performances don’t make a bad batting side.

“I’m still confident in the guys, the guys are still confident that when we get to Barbados, we will put up some good batting performances,” Reifer said.