IT was a ‘disaster’ in the eyes of Chris Gayle, but the West Indies captain has nonetheless called upon his team-mates to rally and remain positive after slumping to a demoralising loss to Australia inside three days of the opening Test at the Gabba.

The home side’s dominance of the first Test was underlined by their efforts yesterday, when skipper Ricky Ponting enforced the follow-on for just the third time in his captaincy career.

With Ponting having earlier declared his side’s innings closed at 8-480 on day two, Gayle’s men posted lowly totals of 228 and 187.

Gayle was not about to hide his disappointment, especially with the Windies’ failures with the willow, but he maintained with two Tests still to come in the series, his team-mates must not drop their heads.

“It’s a must turnaround situation that we’re in at this point of time,” Gayle said.

“There are two Test matches to go, so hopefully we can rebound from this disaster, this loss in three days.”

“We’ve still got to be positive heading into the second Test match.”

There was little to smile about for West Indian supporters aside from the feats of 19-year-old Adrian Barath, who stroked a century on debut.

Gayle suggested there were no excuses for his side’s poor showing with the bat.

“I’m very disappointed with the batting in both innings, it didn’t come of age,” he said.

“Apart from Adrian Barath getting his century on debut, which I thought was a brilliant innings.”

“Some us got a bit of a start and didn’t make the best use of it.”

“It was a pretty decent batting track out there, there weren’t any demons; there wasn’t anything out there to say the wicket is deteriorating a lot.”

“We have got ourselves to blame in that area, so we’ll have to go back to the nets and rebuild for the second Test.”

Ponting urged pundits and fans not to read too much into the visitors’ awful performance.

“We know that the West Indies were probably a long way off their best in this game and there is no opportunity for us to be complacent with what we’ve achieved,” Ponting said.

“We’ve played well, we’ve played them in conditions that suit our style of play, we’ll probably be able to make a more informed assessment of them after the Adelaide game – where they’ll probably get conditions that they are more used to playing on.”

“They stuck to their guns pretty well and we batted pretty well, so let’s wait another week before we start writing off too much.”

The tourists’ woes could be compounded depending on the extent of back injuries suffered by veteran batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan and spearhead quick Jerome Taylor.

Gayle was optimistic both would be fit in time for next week’s Test at Adelaide Oval.

The skipper vowed his leadership would remain just as strong despite the dark times.

“You have to be strong in this situation, you do have to be a strong individual,” Gayle said.

“You have to try and uplift the players and encourage them and lift your game as well.”

“It’s a tough situation and I’ve been around a long time as well to handle this situation.” (CA)