Ashley Nurse, the West Indies spinner, is confident that he is fulfilling the role the team expects from him but would like to be even more consistent in the lead up to the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019.
Nurse sparkled in the fifth match of the tri-series against Bangladesh, taking 3-53 albeit in a losing cause on Monday. He surged to the top of the wicket-taking charts for the series with a total of seven scalps, which is particularly impressive given that Irish conditions don’t typically offer great support for spinners.
“I’ve been bowling well in patches. I haven’t been as consistent as I’d like to be,” Nurse said during the post-match interaction. “Getting wickets is the ultimate goal for a bowler. I got a four-wicket haul in the first game against Ireland but I didn’t bowl that well. But I’ll take getting wickets any day.
“[In] the other two games [it] was a bit tough. This has not been a spinning deck. Wickets here are generally not good for spinners … I have been doing my role in the team and it’s nice to come in and do what the team requires [of] me.”
Nurse was the only incisive bowler for West Indies in the match as the rest struggled to contain Bangladesh’s slow but steady march towards another win. In the 21st over, Nurse dismissed Shakib Al Hasan and Soumya Sarkar in a space of three balls to push back Bangladesh, but an 83-run stand between Mushfiqur Rahim and Mohammad Mithun ensured they got safely over the line without too many hiccups.
“Captain gave me the ball a bit early in the power play so it was all about restricting runs and building some pressure. It worked out for us. I got a couple of wickets in one over but to get 10 wickets [as a team] was the ultimate goal and we didn’t get them.”
“I was in very good rhythm. It was a slow pitch. Today I got most of it right. It was a good performance from me. But to get a win was more important. Obviously we didn’t get that. But hopefully, we can come back in the final.”
The 30-year-old admitted that West Indies didn’t have adequate runs on the board and it will be essential in the final to get a par score so that bowlers will not be under too much pressure to deliver.
“I thought it was a 300 pitch and if we got to 280 also, we would have been fine. The wicket was as good as the game against Ireland,” said Nurse.
“They have got the better of us in the last two games, but that doesn’t mean anything [in the final]. We turn up and get some more runs on the board first and foremost then the bowlers will have an easier job. We need to build some pressure in the field [as well]. And we need to get into their middle-order. We haven’t done that.”
West Indies will play Bangladesh again in the final of the tri-nation series on Friday in Dublin. (ICC)
