We Bowled In Partnerships - Powell; England 200-3 - Day 1

LONDON, United Kingdom: England finished on 200-3 at the end of a Weather affected first day at Lord's in the First Test of the series against West Indies.  West Indies fast bowler Daren Powell who picked up two wickets on the first day of the first Test against England at Lord's spoke with the media. Following are excerpts from his comments.

His assessment of the Windies bowling effort on day one:
We strayed from the plan this morning when we started to bowl. We bowled both sides of the wicket and that put us on the backfoot. After the lunch break, we sat down and analyzed the situation and came out and got things right and we got success for it. We didn't use the new ball as well as we should. When you win a toss and put the opposition in to bat you want to pick up wickets with the new ball early. We didn't do that.

On what could have been the cause for the ordinary first session:
I won't say nerves and I don't want to blame it on lack of practice because we're all professionals. I think we weren't hitting the targets as often as we should, we were all over the place. The captain and coach spoke and we as players made a decision and stuck with it.

On the difference of bowling the white and red balls:
The white ball swings a lot more but I've seen this red ball swing almost like the white ball. The conditions are helping us so we have to make use of the opportunity.

On whether the sloping field at Lord's affected his rhythm:
If you don't put the ball in the right areas, batsmen are going to find it easy to get runs like this morning. It is just  a matter of putting the thoughts of the slope behind and focus on the task at hand.

On the efforts of his fellow bowlers:
I'm pretty happy with the effort all the bowlers put in in the two hours after lunch. We bowled in partnerships which every team would like bowlers to do. We did that fairly well. I have to give recognition to Corey Collymore and Dwayne Bravo with the way they bowled.

On whether playing at Lord's was intimidating:
It's just another day of cricket, it's not like we're making debuts. People speak about us being a young team but you have guys who are pretty young but who have over 40 Test matches so it's just another day of cricket so we have ot go out there do our best and enjoy what we do.

On centurion Alastair Cooke:
He is a patient batsman. He left a lot of balls outside the off stump. I believe in the morning session we didn't play to our plan and that set him up for a good innings.