Ramnaresh Sarwan has credited his purple patch in the Digicel Series 2009 to the fact that he is pain-free and enjoying his cricket more than ever before.
The 28-year-old West Indies batsman has been in prolific form, with scores of 107, 94 and 106 handing him 307 runs and an average of 102.33 and helping the home team carry a 1-0 lead into Thursday’s 4th Digicel Test.
“I don’t know how to judge whether I’m at my peak or not,” Sarwan said. “Certainly I know I’m enjoying my cricket much more and I think that’s the key.
“That’s probably been the change, the transformation into my game. I think once you’re enjoying a game, you tend to be comfortable around other people and you play better. So I’m starting to do that now and, hopefully, it will continue.”
Sarwan, who had a catalogue of injuries – fractured foot, broken thumb, dislocated shoulder, chipped foot bone, again – that plagued his career between late 2006 and 2008 revealed that he is also pain-free for the first time in several years: “I’ve had quite a few injuries and when you get up in the morning or sometimes when you get up at night to go to the washroom, you tend to feel the aches and pains and it tends to hurt your body. But now I’m feeling much better, moving much better and I’m over the injuries, knock on wood. I’m not getting those pains like before so it kind of eases the pressure on my body a bit.”
Sarwan is content with his form but is keen to stress that his goals are all tam-related: “What I want to do is to try and contribute in the best way I can to actually help us to win the series. I’ve never been a player who tends to think about individual goals and stuff like that.”
I just try to contribute, whether it’s a run out, whether it’s a great catch in the field, whatever it is I just want to contribute. Hopefully I can build on the start I’ve had in the past two test matches and carry on for the rest of the series.”
With his two centuries in this series, Sarwan now has 13 in 77 Tests, but he has only stretched one of those past 140, his career-best 261 not out against Bangladesh in Jamaica in 2004. He is eager to correct that statistic and post bigger scores.
“It is a concern and I’m fully aware of that, too. It’s important that I build on the hundreds that I get. Obviously, if I can do that, I’m sure that we’ll put ourselves in better positions,” he said.
“I was very angry I got out the other day on 94. Then on 106 because I didn’t get to close the game off,” he added.
“But nevertheless, I think it’s an opportunity for me to get better and hopefully I can build on it and work on that area. It’s an area I’ve been very aware of and I’ll try and improve on it.”
Sarwan said a series win against England for he and his team-mates would be reward for recent improvement and hard work: “I think if you look for the past few months we’ve been playing, we’ve been pretty consistent, we’ve been getting better as a team and I think that’s important. It’s important for us to build as a team and continue to try to work as a team.
“In terms of a personal point of view, if we were to win this test match and win the series, it would be a great achievement. I’ve been in quite a few test series and we haven’t won too many so if we are to do this, it would be a great achievement.
“But I don’t want us to look too far ahead of ourselves. We have to take it step by step. It’s important that when the (4th Digicel) Test match starts, we play day one hard and then continue from thereon.”
