WI vs NZ 1st Test: West indies won by 9 wickets

NORTH SOUND: A five-wicket haul for Kemar Roach and an unbeaten 64 from opener Chris Gayle saw West Indies beat New Zealand by nine wickets on Sunday to win the first Test of their two-match series at North Sound.

Cricket scorecard

After dismissing the tourists for 272, the hosts raced to their target of a measly 102 for the loss of just Kieran Powell as Assad Fudadin hit the winning single to put the West Indies 1-0 up in the two-match series.


Gayle had already laid the foundation on his return to five-day cricket after more than 18 months due to his stand-off with the West Indies Cricket Board following comments he made about officials in a radio interview by smashing 150 in the first innings - Powell adding a ton of his own for good measure.

The 32-year-old followed up with 64 off 49 balls and although Doug Bracewell took the wicket of Powell for 30, Dean Brownlie taking the catch, Fudadin bagged the winning single in the 20th over at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium.

The Black Caps, just 28 ahead overnight after the West Indies pummelled their way to 522 in response to the visitors' first innings tally of 351, only added 26 more runs before lunch and their chances faded away as Roach dismissed captain Ross Taylor and Kane Williamson in the morning session.

Pacer Roach bowled Taylor following a rain delay - when Taylor was given out lbw when an angled ball hit him low on his pads.

In his next over Roach then bowled Williamson for a duck, finding his off stump.

Kruger van Wyk gave Roach - who had earlier also accounted for Brendon McCullum and Neil Wagner - his fifth wicket to end the New Zealand innings and Gayle and Powell then set up the victory by putting together a partnership of 77 before Fudadin applied the coup de grace.

POST MATCH PRESENTATION

Narine: It was a hard wicket and it was a batting paradise so you just had to bowl over and over again to try and make something happen. I think we have about three days before the next game so there is some time to recover. I saw that the wicket wasn't helping me much so I just kept trying different variations with the seam.

Sunil Narine is the Man of the Match

Sammy: I think the team is playing really well. The way we came out in this Test match was very nice, we played well on a hard wicket. The quality of bowling has been good on a difficult wicket. We stuck to our plans and in the end we were victorious. Credit must go to Chris and Powell, they put us in a good position with the way they batted. I keep asking Narine if he is alright with bowling so many overs but I guess he is just like Ravi and he wants to keep bowling. Ravi has a slight groin strain, but he was really fired up and he asked for one more over just when I was going to change the bowling and I had to extend his spell. It was good because it yielded a wicket for us.

Taylor: I thought we were in the game for parts of it but we didn't bat as well as we should have and we didn't take 20 wickets. Credit to West Indies they played really well. I think the middle order struggled, we need to step up in the next game. We didn't look like creating enough pressure and we let them score freely at over 5 an over. The pitch obviously was a good deck, you could tell by the amount of runs scored. We need to be smarter about the way we play and we will have to bowl in better areas.



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