Bowling legend Joel Garner believes Windies `don't work hard enough`

Port of Spain, Aug 17 (ANI): Asserting that there is no dearth of talent in the West Indies, former fast bowler and current team manager Joel Garner pointed out that players from the Caribbean region need to work extremely hard in the longer format of the game in order to become the top-ranked team. "We've always had promising players, we've always had attractive players, the problems we have is that, most of the players are identified, I don't think they work hard enough, and they fall away," Garner was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo. "I think that if the players are prepared to work as hard as they need to work, they can get to the top of world cricket as well." Garner, who took a staggering 259 scalps in his 58-Test career, insisted that the West Indies players need to focus on building sizeable partnerships, which they displayed during the final day of the second drawn match against India in Jamaica. "I think that the longer they spend in the middle, the easier the batting becomes," he said. "And I think that is one area that I'd like to see improve, where you'd like to see the fellows batting long, not only batting long but batting effectively. "If you look at it, partnerships are important in any cricket game. The reason we were able to save the game in Jamaica was we had batting partnerships virtually whole day. If you don't get the partnerships, you won't get the performances. It's very important to take something away from the game in Jamaica, to look at how we prepare and how we can build on it." West Indies will take on India in the fourth and final Test starting on Thursday before moving to the United States to play two T20Is against the same opposition. (ANI)