West Indies coach John Dyson conceded the late arrival of captain Chris Gayle was "not ideal" after his side were thrashed by 10-wickets in their final match before next week's first Test against England. The tourists were beaten by the England Lions, the national 'A' side, with more than a day to spare, at Derby after losing their last six wickets for 25 runs to leave their opponents needing just 72 for victory.
It was far from the warm-up they wanted ahead of the first match of a two-Test series starting at Lord's on Wednesday. West Indies' cause has not been helped by star batsman Gayle's decision to delay his arrival from South Africa, where he has been playing for the Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League, until Monday.
The left-handed opener had been due to touch down in England on Sunday but put his arrival back a day so he could play an extra IPL match following talks with the West Indies Cricket Board. Dyson did not pull his punches, saying: "I've said all along, with the IPL in conjunction with this tour, even if he was arriving as we expected, that's not ideal."
The former Australia opener added: "It's not enough time for an ideal preparation (for a Test match) but we will work with it. "The medical boys all say that, after that length of flight, you need a minimum of a couple of days to get over the jet lag and re-acclimatise and then you need a couple of days of practice," explained the New South Welshman, who played 30 Tests for Australia from 1977 to 1984.
"We were prepared to work around that and now that it's been extended out a bit further it puts more pressure on Chris and I suppose the people in the West Indies Cricket Board who made that decision."
Nevertheless, Dyson said Gayle was sufficiently talented to still sparkle at Lord's despite having little time to adjust to English conditions.
"Chris handles a lot of pressure and has played some magnificent cricket over the past 12 months in all forms of the game and he seems to take these sort of things in his stride.
"But the medical advice is that, when you fly that sort of distance, you need time to recover from the flight and re-acclimatise to the time zones. "I also think you need a good couple of hits at least in the conditions you're going to play in."
In Gayle's absence, the West Indies failed to reach 250 for the third time in four innings on this tour. "It's not what we would have liked but there were some positive things that came out of it," Dyson said. "I thought Lendl Simmons played well, Shiv (Chanderpaul) again played well and Jerome Taylor's spell yesterday (Friday) with the new ball was very encouraging given he hadn't played for a while."
Lions captain Rob Key was delighted with the way in which uncapped leg-spinner Adil Rashid, who made 72 to help give England a first innings lead of 108 which owed much to a century from wicket-keeper Tim Ambrose, backed up his batting with three wickets including the prize scalp of Chanderpaul. "He genuinely got Chanderpaul out with his wrong one and that's what those blokes can do," said Key. Those mystery spinners can get you wickets when no-one else can on flat wickets."
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