India vs West Indies 2018: Hats Off To Prithvi Shaw, Says West Indies Fielding Coach Nic Pothas

West Indies fielding coach Nic Pothas was all praise for Prithvi Shaw as the debutant’s stunning century highlighted India’s domination on the field on day one.

Shaw justified the huge hype surrounding him by scoring a sizzling century.  It took Shaw only 99 deliveries to reach his maiden Test ton. He was eventually displayed after playing a stroke-filled knock of 134.  In doing so, he became 15th Indian batsman to score a hundred on debut.

Overall he is the 105th player to achieve the feat in Test cricket. The opener also became the fourth youngest player of all time to hit a debut ton and the second youngest Indian to make a Test century after Sachin Tendulkar.

And speaking at the end of the day, Nic Pothas hailed Shaw but managed to keep his words under control as he he did not want to make a bold prediction.

“He is obviously a very exciting prospect for the future. But I think it would be a mess of me to make a judgement call on a very good young cricketer having seen him play only once. But certainly on today’s performance, hats off to him.”

Unlike Shaw, West Indies had a tough day on the field. They suffered a huge setback even before the start of the play when an ankle injury ruled their skipper Jason Holder out of the game. In his absence, Kraigg Brathwaite had to take the captaincy duties.

When asked about the injury, Pothas did not divulge much information. However, he said the pacer was carrying the pain and injury from the preceding training camp in Dubai.

“I am not in a position to discuss Jason’s injury but he felt something in Dubai in our pre-season camp. Obviously it has not settled down as much as he or the medical staff would have liked. He will be monitored on a daily basis and we will wait and see how that pans out,” said Pothas.

“But more importantly on the day (Day One) itself, I think we could have probably started the day a little bit better and having said that Prithvi (Shaw) played really well early on, we probably did not execute as well as we would have liked on the plans but we dragged the game back very well,” he added.

West Indies also had to play without their pace spearhead Kemar Roach who had to return to his home after the death of his grandmother. In his absence, only Shannon Gabriel managed to leave a mark while the other bowlers failed to pose much of a threat.

“Shannon has had a fantastic year, through the series against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka he bowled quick. But we know that Shannon Gabriel can bowl quick, but the most exciting part for me was at the back end of the day he was still getting it up to 145 kilometres an hour, towards the end of a very hot day on a pretty docile wicket,”  said Pothas.

Not surprisingly, India throughly dominated the day. At stumps, they were 364 for 4 with Virat Kohli (72) and Rishabh Pant (17) unbeaten.