West Indies captain Nicholas Pooran believes the team is improving despite a fourth straight T20 international loss to open the series against New Zealand.

Following a difficult 4-1 series loss to top team India, the team narrowly lost its opening match against the Kiwis by 13 runs, thanks in large part to the late-innings heroics of Romario Shepherd and Odean Smith.

Chasing a decent total of 185, the West Indies lost wickets in clusters in the middle overs but Shepherd and Smith added 58 for the seventh wicket.  Having cracked a score of 150 just once in the previous series, Pooran found some encouragement in the team’s opener, despite the result.

“I’m happy we are starting to find our template.  We know scores above 175, 180 can be tricky for us but we can see that we are actually starting to bat deep,” Pooran said, following the match.

“Guys are actually starting to play the situation a bit smarter.  Today Jason was in that position with Shamarh Brooks.  I thought both of them batted really well, they just never got that big over that was required, having said that, I think the template is coming nicely,” he added.

The West Indies and New Zealand will play the second match of the series on Friday.