KOCHI, India, CMC- Indian captain MS Dhoni has praised his bowlers despite their 124 run defeat to West Indies in the opening One-Day International on Wednesday.
Dhoni says he was “happy” with the performance of his bowler and described them as doing a “decent job” in their death bowling.
After leaking 52 in the batting Powerplay, India’s bowlers gave away 66 between overs 41 and 49, before Marlon Samuels and Darren Sammy scored 15 off the final over.
“Most our bowlers apart from Bhuvaneshwar gave runs. Considering that we restricted them to a total of 321 on this wicket, I must say our bowlers did a decent job,”Dhoni said.
“I was quite happy with the death bowling and they bowled quite consistently maintaining their lengths and we were able to put fielders in right areas. Overall, I am quite happy with the bowling.”
Bhuvneshwar Kumar was wicketless and he conceded only 38 in ten overs, Ravindra Jadeja had the next best economy rate – 5.80 while the other four bowlers went at more than 6.50 runs per over.
“I think we had to do something because we have seen the impact of dew here. There was no surety, but dew plays a factor more often than not so the team is forced to bowl first,” Dhoni said.
“It was very hot and the fast bowlers were having a tough time and they would love to bowl few more overs. It was quite hard also to keep them rotating. I could not really rotate them well”.
Marlon Samuels scored his sixth ODI hundred, an unbeaten 126 to lift West Indies to victory over India, securing a one nil lead in the five match series.
Samuels who later picked up two wickets, had also shared in a partnership of 165 with Denish Ramdin- a West Indies record for the fourth wicket against India.
“They [West Indies] batted really well,” said the Indian skipper.
“If you see, we could not get too many wickets with the new ball. They were hitting the big shots but still we were not able to put pressure on them by not letting them get those easy singles.”
The second ODI will be played at Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium in Delhi tomorrow.
