Former Australian spinner Rodney Hogg is happy that his comments fuelled the West Indies to do well on their tour Down Under. The Victorian also stated that a little bit of game time did very well for the Caribbean team. On Channel 10 after the West Indies’ 10-wicket defeat in Adelaide, Hogg had said that weak sides shouldn’t come over to play as well. He also predicted that Mitchell Starc would do well against the tourists with the pink ball in Brisbane.

As quoted by sen.com.au, he said: “Well, apparently, I’ve reinvented West Indies Test cricket. They were hopeless before I made those comments, and they’ve all jumped up and been motivated to play well.”They came here with six guys that didn’t have a Test cap, and they were so inexperienced, and you sort of thought, ‘Well, they are a bunch of hopeless players’, but give them some game time, a few of them showed, some real ability, didn’t they? The better that the longer the two games went on, the better they got.”

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Rodney Hogg further added that he thought his prediction would come true when the tourists found themselves struggling at 64-5 on Day 1 as well.

“When I looked at the West Indies in that first innings in this second Test, I was having a look here, and I’m thinking to myself: ‘How good was my prediction?’ They were 5/65, and Starc had three wickets … it was looking like a dead-set two-and-a-half-day game. What an amazing performance. It was fantastic to see them given an opportunity to play a second Test match against Australia,” he concluded.