KINGSTON, May 27: Australia beat West Indies in the opening Test of their three-match series on Monday but West Indies coach John Dyson said his side had learnt the visitors were fallible.

Top in Tests and world champions in the one-day game, Australia have dominated international cricket for the last decade but Dyson, an Australian himself, said his team’s battling display showed there were chinks in their opponents’ armour.

“It has made us realise that they are human, they are not superhuman. They are just human and they can falter.

“If we can apply enough pressure at the right times and continue doing the good things that we can do, they might falter just enough to give us that opening,” said Dyson whose team had the tourists shaking at 18 for five in the second innings.

West Indies, who have suffered a decade of decline, showed, particularly with their bowling and fielding that they were an improving side, albeit one whose batting was not yet sturdy enough.

“I think we will take away from the game a lot of positive things. That’s what we’ve tried to do since the South Africa tour last year. You can’t expect a team to turn around, overnight and consistently win every game,” Dyson said.

“We recognise that and that this series is against the strongest unit in the world. I think we have put on a pretty good show in this match. If we can just improve in a couple of areas, we will put on another good show in the second Test in Antigua.”

Dyson picked out the pace bowling of Fidel Edwards and Daren Powell as particularly pleasing along with the batting of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who made a century on the third day.

But he demanded that other batsmen, such as Devon Smith and Runako Morton showed the ability to go on from good starts to make big scores and he was disappointed with the failure to make more of the final day’s opportunity.

“Obviously I was hoping, hoping for a much stronger start to the day. But they bowled very well. There were only a couple of sessions throughout the Test match that cost us very dearly.

That is the thing about Test match cricket, you can’t afford to have bad sessions.”—Reuters