[SPORTS]:::Gayle happy with win but not with batting

No. 67 Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Zimbabwe may not be the strongest opposition, but West Indies captain Chris Gayle was delighted after leading his team to a 4-1 ODI series victory, their first in the for­mat in nearly 20 months.

    "It's been a long time since we last won a series, and it feels really, really good to have achieved this," he said after the four-wicket victory in the final one-dayer in Kingstown.
    West Indies won with more than 22 overs to spare, largely due to Gayle's typically full-throttle 63, but his dismissal sparked a collapse in which four wickets went down for eight runs renewing concerns over their bat­ting fragility.
    "We have to take a close look at our batting because we want to win games more convincingly and consistently, but a win is a win," Gayle said. "We have to try and not to lose wickets in bunches the way we do now, but it is something we have been discussing, and trying to get out of our system."
    He was satisfied, though, that the team had fought back from the embarrassing defeat in the first one-dayer to win four in a row. "It has been an entire team effort because we started really badly, when we lost the first ODI. But for the guys to have bounced back, and win the series 4-1 was a tremendous effort."
    New coach Ottis Gibson said West Indies had experimented with their batting order in the series - like the move to send Denesh Ramdin at No.4 in the third ODI ­as part of the fine-tuning for next year's World Cup. "I've just been here for two weeks now and I'm still getting to know the players and getting to know which player fits which position best so there's been a little bit of shuffling.
    "The thinking behind that is that we've got literally 12 games left before the next World Cup in India next year so I've got 12 opportunities to see players, to see where they best fit so that by the time we get to the World Cup there's no shuffling."
     West Indies' next assignment are the ICC World Twenty20 at home, followed by a tough full series against South Africa.