West Indies coach Eldine Baptiste said that dropped catches may have cost his side the initiative on the opening day of the first Test of the Sobers/Tissera series at Galle, yesterday.
Two dropped catches let the West Indies down and at the end of the day, the home team reached an imperious 250 for two. When play resumes today, opener Dimuth Karunaratne will continue on 135 and Dinesh Chandimal on 72.
Earlier in the day Darren Bravo dropped Lahiru Thirimanne at slip but it was not detrimental as he was out soon after for 17. Jerome Taylor then floored a chance by Chandimal off Devendra Bishoo on 16 and that proved very costly.
Baptiste the interim coach of the team said: “Definitely the bowlers put the hard work in bowled brilliantly in the circumstances and at the end of the day things could have been better. It could have been 220 for five if we had taken our catches, instead it is 250/2. We now have to go home recover and come back tomorrow (today) and hopefully take our catches.
The former Test allrounder was high in praise of skipper Jason Holder, who was making his debut as Test captain, saying: “I thought Jason did extremely well, everything that came his way he handled very well. As the cliches goes ‘catches win matches’, no one wants to drop a catch, we just need to come back and prepare to work hard tomorrow.
“Give credit to the Sri Lankan batters they played according to the conditions although we bowled well.”
Baptiste shared that he is impressed with the attitude of this West Indies team and he has enjoyed his stint thus far with them during this tour. He said, “So far everything has been good, they have been very professional, I have no complaint about this team and that is the way to go forward.”