West Indies Loses Final Test Match at Windsor Park Sports Stadium

After the much anticipated weeklong cricket affair at the Windsor Park Sports Stadium, Australia won the third and final test against West Indies.

Michael Clarke took five wickets as Australia beat West Indies by 75 runs at Windsor Park on Friday.

West Indies fought to the end with captain Darren Sammy scoring  61 runs while last man standing, Shane Shillingford, 31 not out, hitting their highest test scores.

After resuming on 173 for five wickets, West Indies were bowled out for 294 runs to give Australia a 2-0 series win.

During a post game press conference, Australian captain Michael Clarke says this is a result of hard work by all members of his team.

“We’re really happy that we managed to get the results [we did]. It takes courage to play all that.  Adam Gilchrist was another player that played that way and had a lot of success and credit needs to go to the boys for having the courage to do that.

The Australian cricket captain says his team continues to improve with every game.

“It’s very pleasing that the team has performed well.  I’ve said for a long time that the focus is the team having success, the team winning games in cricket…unfortunately in this game you can’t always perform individually.  You’re going to have down times and you’re not going to make as many runs as you’d like or take as many wickets as you can, but if you can help contribute to the team’s success then you play a big part in this team and I think we’ve done that throughout this series.”

The Australia team is currently ranked as number 3 in world test cricket. Captain Clarke says there is much work to be done to secure the top spot.

“It’s not just about one series or one summer, it’s consistency over a long period of time that gets you to the number one team in the world.”

Meantime West Indies captain Darren Sammy also spoke with reporters.

He says both he and his team are disappointed in the outcome of the series.

“We believe that we could’ve beaten them, [however] they won the key moments in the test series and that was the difference.”

Despite their losses however the West Indies captain says the team has improved its performance.

“I think we played a lot better.  You could see we had that attitude, that never say die attitude throughout the one day to twenty and now the test series but you could have all that and still not [achieve] success which is the victory…. I know the coach is proud of the team, I’m proud of the team… but we would like to have some victories.”

Sammy commended Dominican Shane Shillingford for his performance during the final test.

Shillingford became the first Dominican to play international cricket on his home soil in a test series taking six wickets in the first innings and four in the second innings making him the first West Indian spinner to take ten wickets in a test since Lance Gibbs in 1966.