MUL­TAN, Pak­istan – De­spite star­ring on the open­ing day of the first Test against Pak­istan, pac­er Jay­den Seales says he ex­pects spin bowlers to play a ma­jor role on the re­main­ing four days.

Seales, the lone fast bowler in the West In­dies’ play­ing XI, took three ear­ly wick­ets, in­clud­ing the prized scalp of Babar Azam to set­back the home side ear­ly on.

Gu­dakesh Motie, who be­came the first West In­di­an spin­ner to open the bowl­ing in the first in­nings of a Test match took the on­ly oth­er wick­et to fall, while fel­low spin­ners Kevin Sin­clair and Jomel War­ri­can went wick­et­less.

How­ev­er, speak­ing to re­porters at the end of day one, Seale said he be­lieved the spin­ners would fea­ture promi­nent­ly in the re­main­ing four days.

“I think that as a bowl­ing unit we did re­al­ly well so it’s just to back it up again to­mor­row (Sat­ur­day).

“The toss was im­por­tant be­cause of the way the pitch looked, but say­ing that, I think go­ing for­ward in the game the spin­ners will come in­to the game a lot more,” Seales said.

“It may re­verse swing at some point, but I still think that the spin­ners may dom­i­nate this game mov­ing for­ward.”

Speak­ing on his per­for­mance, Seales said while the pitch was suit­ed for spin­ners, he re­alised there was al­so some­thing for the fast bowlers ear­ly on.

“We saw from the train­ing ses­sion that the ball did a lit­tle bit when it was new, so it was for me to try and get the best out of the new ball and put the ball in the right ar­eas, and with the cold con­di­tions this af­ter­noon it did a bit and it worked out for us,” Seales said.

“My plan was just to build pres­sure and as a fast bowler in Asian coun­tries, you tend to want to make a big im­pact and you want to do well for the team as it’s ob­vi­ous­ly dom­i­nat­ed by spin in these con­di­tions, so as a fast bowler I al­ways want to get a wick­et or be in the game and it so hap­pened I got the wick­ets for the team to­day.”

CMC