New Delhi, Nov 9: Having put up a fight on the first three days of the first Test against India, the touring West Indies lost the Kotla Test on Day 4 thanks to a steady innings from VVS Laxman following a solid batting effort from Sachin Tendulkar.
Led by Darren Sammy, the relatively inexperienced team made India play hard till the winning run was scored. With scores level on 275, Sammy claimed a wicket off the second ball of the over and refused to concede the single for the rest of his over. It was on the fourth ball of the next over that Laxman finally hit the winning run.
Sammy spoke about the game and his team in a post-match interaction.
Excerpts:
On securing a first innings lead of 95 runs
When you play against a top team you want to create an opportunity to win and we did that in this Test match. But we didn’t bat as we were supposed to in the second innings and it cost us [the match].
On the pitch easing out in the last two days
Yes, that’s what we came in and we realised – the pitch on the fourth day played better than the first two days. I would like to commend the bowlers on the way they stuck at it. Yesterday we were bowling against the two most experienced men in world cricket and they didn’t take the game away from us. We stuck at it and yes, it was unfortunate that we didn’t have enough runs on the board.
On the positives from the game like the young bowlers, and on Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s batting
No doubt we are an improving team. Like I said, playing against a very experienced team what we want is improvement and we showed that. We showed that if stick to our basics and execute our plans, we could create opportunities.
On their plans for the next Test at Kolkata on November 14
The spinners got most of the wickets; that’s been something that’s plagued us for the last few years. Play spin properly and don’t get out to them [will be our mantra]. We are looking forward [to the next Test]. The series is quite alive. We believe we could win matches here and we just have to go out there and do that.
