Chase targeting first Test win against Sri Lanka

ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – West In­dies Test cap­tain Ros­ton Chase be­lieves his side has what it takes to open their ac­count in this cy­cle of the World Test Cham­pi­onship (WTC) in their up­com­ing two-match se­ries against Sri Lan­ka.

The two sides will clash in the open­er at the Sir Vi­vian Richards Sta­di­um be­gin­ning on Thurs­day, with the home side hav­ing lost six and drawn one of their pre­vi­ous sev­en Test match­es in the WTC.

While the West In­dies will be go­ing af­ter their first Test se­ries win against Sri Lan­ka in 23 years, Chase will be look­ing to se­cure his first Test vic­to­ry since be­ing ap­point­ed cap­tain in May 2025.

Speak­ing in a pre-match in­ter­view on Wednes­day, Chase said he was fo­cused on claim­ing that first Test win.

“First­ly, I’d like to get the first win on the ta­ble for the West In­dies team. We’ve played a num­ber of match­es but we haven’t got­ten over that hur­dle in win­ning a game as a team, so that’s the first goal I would like to see us achieve and then to win the se­ries as well,” Chase said.

The 34-year-old Bar­ba­di­an said play­ing at home and hav­ing the ser­vices of the re­turn­ing Shamar and Alzarri Joseph along with fel­low pac­ers Ke­mar Roach and Jay­den Seales, were a big boost for the team.

Both Josephs missed the last Test se­ries against New Zealand last De­cem­ber due to in­juries, while the 37-year-old Roach – a vet­er­an of 88 Test match­es – is three wick­ets away from be­com­ing the fifth West In­dies fast bowler to claim 300 wick­ets.

Seales is al­so five wick­ets away from 100 Test wick­ets.

“I think main­ly we know how to play in our own con­di­tions, so that is the ad­van­tage for us, and we tend to utilise it very well,” Chase said.

“The last se­ries we had against Aus­tralia the bowlers were on fire, and they re­al­ly utilised the Caribbean wick­ets that we have to of­fer, so I think that’s where our strengths lie and we’ll be look­ing to utilise that as much as pos­si­ble.

“Both Josephs are main­ly the spear­head of the at­tack, es­pe­cial­ly Shamar who had an out­stand­ing sea­son against Aus­tralia, so to have him back is a plus and al­so to have Alzarri back in his home con­di­tions, I think this is some­place where he en­joys bowl­ing.

“I think when you speak about Jay­den and Ke­mar it’s like a teacher and stu­dent kind of re­la­tion­ship that they have. Ke­mar is the kind of guy that al­ways gives that knowl­edge to Jay­den and Jay­den is the guy who al­ways wants to learn and im­prove be­cause he’s young and Ke­mar’s been there and been do­ing it for a long time. He’s five away from 300 so that goes to show the type of class of play­er that he is,” the cap­tain added.

Chase said he al­so ex­pect­ed to see a big im­prove­ment from his bat­ters.

He said spend­ing longer times at the crease and show­ing more con­sis­ten­cy were cru­cial if they were to de­feat Sri Lan­ka.

“I just want to see a bit more con­sis­ten­cy. I think we have five cen­turies [in the Test Cham­pi­onship cy­cle] so it shows that guys have been putting up their hands, but I just think we need to do it a bit more as a col­lec­tive unit so that we can get big­ger scores.

“I think once we are able to con­sis­tent­ly put 280 to 300 on the board, we will be a force to be reck­oned with as a Test play­ing na­tion,” Chase said.

(CMC)