Sarwan, who celebrated his 22nd birthday during the match that the Black Caps won by 204 runs, was out for a first-ball duck and 18 in the second innings, to ill-advised cross-batted pulled shots from innocuous short deliveries.

“Well, I don’t want to make a big case for Sarwan or pinpoint (Ridley) Jacobs. I think we all played loose shots and got out,” Hooper said in a post-match news conference.

“The last time I saw Ramnaresh out this way was against South Africa. I think since then he has disciplined himself and has been batting well all summer,” Hooper noted.

“I think we got to be careful not to be harsh on these players.

Ramnaresh is a young player. He is only 22. This is the first time he would’ve had this amount of cricket behind him and obviously, you begin to see a little bit of cracks,” Hooper reasoned.

“So the important thing is not to be too critical. I think you’ve got to give them time. Like I said, this is a learning process for a lot of people.

This is what the itinerary will look for the next few years. We will be playing a lot of cricket and I’m sure we’ll learn from this,” Hooper contended.

An emotional Harper also stoutly defended Sarwan, pointing to the receding five-Test series against India when he amassed 317 runs with four half-centuries at an average of 45.28.

“I think when players are failing over a long period of time, they are often given a bit of a rest, that is exactly the situation,” Harper said.

“I think that at times, we have to remember this. I think we have very poor memories as West Indians,” declared Harper.

“I mean stitting and listening to people sometimes commenting on Brian Lara for example who in his last series, averaged a hundred-odd and yet we are saying all sort of things,” Harper pointed out.

“Here is a young fellow (Sarwan), who we think has the world at his feet, is now growing in the game, and who averaged close to fifty in his last Test series. He made two horrible errors in this game, no doubt about that but I think we are a little drastic at times,” Harper remarked.

“I think our measures sometimes that we asked for are too drastic.

Sure, we are going to be critical of Sarwan because that is not what the team demanded at the time but I think dropping Sarwan, won’t be the right way to go. That’s my personal opinion,” Harper said.

“… Surely, we have to look at the mistakes each of us as players made in this game and be very critical of ourselves and try and make sure that we don’t make those mistakes again which is a process we all go through after each day’s play,” Harper added.