West Indies middle order batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul driving straight during his 53 not out in the first one-day international against England at Lord's yesterday. England won by 79 runs. - Dellmar

LONDON, England (CMC):

West Indies captain Chris Gayle is hoping his side can rebound from their disappointing loss to England yesterday and win the three-match one-day International (ODI) series.

England capitalised on a weak batting performance by West Indies and thumped the Caribbean side by 79 runs in the series opener at Lord's.

"We're not out of it yet, we can rebound and beat England 2-1," Gayle said in a post-match press conference.

"We're up against it now but sometimes we play better cricket when our back is against the wall," he added.

The series continues with matches on Wednesday in Birming-ham and Saturday in Nottingham.

Sent to bat, England posted 225 all out in 49.5 overs against a splendid bowling performance from fiery pacer Fidel Edwards, whose haul of five for 45 earned him the Man of theMatch award.

But West Indies failed to challenge the target after tumbling to 13 for four.

Very encouraging

"We lost too many early wickets and that set us back. In the one-day format of the game it's difficult to come back when you make so many mistakes. I think it was a 'gettable' target. I give credit to the England bowlers. We have a lot of things to really correct and try and put things in place," he said, adding that the bowling - led by Edwards - was very encouraging.

"I thought restricting them to 225 was tremendous work by the bowlers. The bowlers really got the ball in the right areas and utilised the conditions well so we have to try and combine everything together to get the result out there. We bowled well and I had all confidence that we were going to get the target, unfortunately it didn't happen," Gayle said.

West Indies used the consistent Chanderpaul at number five in the batting order yesterday because they felt they 'needed a left hander in the middle' to counter England's left-arm spinner Monty Panesar, but Gayle believes they may revisit that strategy for the next encounter mid-week.

"Chanderpaul keeps getting runs for us and it is something we have to look into - getting him to bat earlier. We need someone to stick around (with Chanderpaul) and get a big partnership, these things really help. I'll discuss it (putting Shiv higher up the order) with the coach and him (Shiv) as well," said Gayle, in his first series as West Indies captain.