Fielding howler adds to woes as Windies draw tour game
An embarrassing fielding blunder added to the woes of the beleaguered West Indies in their final hit-out Sunday before the second Test against Australia on Boxing Day.
The Caribbean tourists, who were hammered by an innings in the first Test in Hobart, declared overnight at 303 for eight in their two-day game with a Victoria XI in Geelong. The inexperienced locals were 169 for three in reply when play was abandoned on the final day by rain, with an unprofessional piece of fielding from Jerome Taylor helping their cause.
Jake Hancock finished 80 not out but should have been dismissed on 22.
Skipper Jason Holder was bowling in the 14th over when Hancock hooked the ball to fine leg where Taylor was fielding. It what should have been a regulation catch, but Taylor was inexplicably leaning on the fence with his back to play, gazing into a near-empty grandstand.
“I’ll hear about it officially in a little while, because I wasn’t watching at the time,” coach Phil Simmons told reporters. “It can’t be a good look. It’s a team trying to gain that sort
of respect, so things like that, we have to make sure we cut them out.”
Taylor only turned around when teammates yelled that the ball was heading in his direction.
He awkwardly attempted to stop the ball but it bounced past for a dispiriting boundary. Hancock could not believe his luck.
“It was pretty good that. I definitely got away with one there,” Hancock said. “I couldn’t really see what happened. He wasn’t even on the field, was he? They (the West Indies) had a little chuckle. They sort of just brushed it off really and kept going. They didn’t seem too fazed by it.”
Undisciplined fielding was one of the West Indies’ many problems in Hobart, where Australia won by an innings and 212 runs inside three days. The weekend’s tuneup provided few pointers for the tourists ahead of the Boxing Day Test at MCG.