CAS­TRIES, St Lu­cia – West In­dies cap­tain Rov­man Pow­ell strong­ly be­lieves that if his bat­ters had bet­ter as­sessed the con­di­tions in the just con­clud­ed T20I se­ries against Eng­land, they might have been on the win­ning end.

Eng­land cap­tured the best-of-five se­ries 3-1 af­ter Sun­day’s fi­nal T20I at the Daren Sam­my Crick­et Ground was rained out with on­ly five overs of play pos­si­ble.

The vis­i­tors won the toss in the first three match­es at Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bar­ba­dos and sent the Windies in to bat on each oc­ca­sion, with the home side’s bats­men strug­gling to come to grip with the con­di­tions.

In the first two match­es, they lost three wick­ets in­side the pow­er play and in the third game they lost five wick­ets in­side the first six overs.

Trail­ing 3-0, the West In­dies’ bat­ters showed up to the par­ty in the fourth T20I on their way to com­plet­ing a his­toric run chase by post­ing 221 for five, the high­est ever at the Daren Sam­my Crick­et Ground.

Speak­ing dur­ing the post-match cer­e­mo­ny on Sun­day, Pow­ell said that fail­ure to prop­er­ly as­sess those con­di­tions in the open­ing match­es ul­ti­mate­ly led to them los­ing the se­ries.

“It’s been a tough se­ries. I think a lot of cred­it has to be giv­en to Jos and his team, they re­al­ly came in our con­di­tions and dom­i­nat­ed.

“But hav­ing said that I think we played good crick­et in patch­es, just that we didn’t play good crick­et for long enough pe­ri­ods,” said Pow­ell, the sec­ond-high­est run scor­er in the se­ries with 153 runs, be­hind Eng­land’s Phil Salt, who scored 162 runs.

“I think we al­ways as a bat­ting group have a tem­plate that we try to work with, but un­for­tu­nate­ly the tem­plate didn’t work in our first few games.

“But as a team, we need to as­sess a lit­tle bit faster. It took us about two or three games to re­al­ly won­der what’s re­al­ly hap­pen­ing to us as a bat­ting group, and al­so as a bowl­ing group we need to sharp­en up on a few ar­eas,” he added.

With the West In­dies set to play Bangladesh in three T20 in­ter­na­tion­als next month, Pow­ell said there were still some pos­i­tives to take away from the Eng­land se­ries.

“The way we played the last game we showed that we can play re­al­ly good crick­et.

“You know if we just as­sessed a lit­tle bit ear­li­er in the se­ries it pos­si­bly would have been a dif­fer­ent se­ries, but a lot of cred­it has to be giv­en to Jos and his team…” Pow­ell said.

CMC