West Indies Tour of Pakistan was already in jeopardy with the rising COVID cases but it suffered the biggest setback after they missed out on Sheldon Cottrell, Roston Chase and Kyle Mayers’ services after they tested positive. Additionally, assistant coach Roddy Estwick and physician Dr. Akshai Mansingh also tested positive. With the trio already missing at the start of the tour, they suffered an additional setback when Shai Hope, Akeal Hosein, and Justin Greaves also tested positive before the 3rd T20i putting the game in peril.
Although both teams elected to play on, West Indies were forced to field a depleted team and had to scamper to assemble an 11-man team. They gave their finest performance of the series with the bat, but it wasn’t enough to prevent the series from becoming a whitewash. Nonetheless, their stand-in skipper Nicholas Pooran, who was tasked with leading the team on the Pakistan tour when regular skipper Kieron Pollard withdrew, was blown away by his squad’s courage in the game on December 16.
The captain contributed significantly to his team’s 207-run total in 20 overs by scoring 64 runs off 37 deliveries. “Most of the guys haven’t slept the whole night and I’m very proud of the unit. I want to commend all the guys for making that extra effort to come out to play today,” Pooran said in the post-match interview after his team was defeated by seven wickets, as reported by One Cricket. “We spent the whole day wondering whether we should play this game or not. A lot of positives and a lot of guys took their opportunities,” he added.
The Rapid Antigen tests conducted on the remaining 15 West Indies players came back negative but the ODI series which was scheduled to begin on December 18 was postponed primarily due to the lack of resources in the West Indies camp. The PCB and WICB announced in a joint statement that the three-match ODI series, which was supposed to follow the ongoing T20Is, had been pushed back until June next year.
