England’s stand-in captain Moeen Ali warned his players need to adapt better to the different conditions after losing the T20 series to West Indies.
Jason Holder took four wickets with the final four balls of the match as England fell 17 runs short after West Indies’ batsmen had recovered from being pegged back by England in the middle of their innings with a late barrage of runs.
And England’s replacement skipper for the injured Eoin Morgan said: “West Indies were the better team. We didn’t adapt to the conditions and just fell short. We are good on flat wickets but we want to get better in conditions like these going forward.
“We are working on our death bowling but I didn’t think we were too bad today. We’ll get better as time goes on. They were smarter than us today with bat and ball. But we played some good cricket and, although we fell short, it was a good series.”
Having got off to another strong start, the hosts found themselves pegged back by some excellent spin bowling by Adil Rashid and Liam Livingstone, taking two wickets apiece that looked set to leave them well short of a competitive total.
West Indies went 42 balls without a boundary before captain Kieron Pollard and Rovman Powell tore England’s fast bowlers asunder with 74 runs off the final five overs for a total of 179-4.
James Vince was the pick of England’s batsmen with 55 off 35 before he was caught on the boundary as one of four Akeal Hosein victims. Sam Billings added 41 but it proved the only other innings of note as Holder’s late bowling heroics on his home pitch sealed a comfortable win for West Indies.
“It was a classic finish,” said Holder afterwards. “It was not the best of starts from us but we just tried to stay in the game. I’m pumped up for the moment. I love playing at Kensington Oval, it’s the best place in the world to play cricket.”
