West Indies face yet another defeat

After being whitewashed in the Test series, West Indies lost the 1st clash by 5 wicktes in a 3-match ODI series against New Zealand. The match was played today at Cobham Oval in Whangarei.

Winning the toss New Zealand elected to bowl first. Chris Gayle, who had scored 2 hundreds in his last 3 matches in the Bangladesh Premier League including a knock of 146* in the final, made 22 runs today before getting dismissed by Bracewell. The next batsman—Shai Hope—got out in the same over without scoring any runs.

Apart from a 59 runs’ innings of Rovman Powell and an innings of 76 from Elvin Lewis, there were no other important knocks played in the 1st innings.

Elvin Lewis was dimissed by Todd Astle while Bracwell took the wicket of Powell. Shimron Hetmeyer got caught at long-off while trying to hit a delivery from Astle after scoring 29 runs. Ashley Nurse was trapped lbw at 2 runs by the same bowler.

West Indies kept losing wickets at regular intervals and ended up posting 248/9 on the scoreboard. Chasing the target, New Zealand lost their 1st wicket at 108 runs. Before getting dismissed by Kesrick Williams, their opener Colin Munro scored 49 runs from 36 deliveries. His departure was followed by George Worker’s dismissal who made 57 runs before getting picked up by Nurse.

The skipper of the Black Caps—Kane Williams—played an innings of 36 runs before being bowled out by Holder. Another Kiwi batsman left the ground at 17 runs as he was trapped plumb. Henry Nicholls made the same amount of runs before getting dismissed by Holder.

Ross Taylor and Todd Astle remained unbeaten at 49 and 15 respectively as their team registered 249 runs losing 5 wickets and reached the target with 4 overs remaining.

Winning the Man of the Match award for bagging 4 wickets, Bracewell said, “It was a nice start. Was nice to get Chris off the first ball. (On his road back from injury) Really good to be back and be among the wickets.

“It's been a tough ride back but I've done a lot of hard work with the rehab and all. It's been a bit niggly still but I'm toiling. Good to be back in the mix and among this bunch of guys”

The teams will face-off against each other in the 2nd ODI on 23rd instant. West Indies are expected to fight back and try their best to prevent New Zealand from sealing the series.