Kolkata, Oct 25: England captain Alastair Cook on Tuesday expressed his disappointment on the 0-5 series whitewash coming after the 95-run loss against India in the final ODI. The skipper felt that the platform set by Craig Kieswetter and him was rendered futile by some poor shot selection from his batsmen and effective spin bowling from the Indians.
Excerpts from the presentation:
On the 5-0 loss
We were in with a shout there at 120 for 0. It's very disappointing. We just got blown away there. It's always hard when you lose 5-0 but there are always positives to take from it.
On the team’s batting performance
We said that we could lose wickets in clusters; we seem to have lost 10 wickets there in a cluster. We had set up the game beautifully to win at the start but the way they bowled [was excellent] and also we played a couple of poor shots. It is a disappointing end.
On India setting them a target of 272
Credit to MS Dhoni at the end – he hits the ball very well and he's a hard person to bowl to. 270 was probably gettable after the way we started but if you lose 10 for 50-odd, you're not going to win anything.
On the positives from the series
Only a handful of us have played a one-day series in India so it's good for the youngsters to get some experience. We've been thoroughly beaten out here but there's been some positives. Steven Finn has been excellent and we bowled well in these conditions, up until about 35 overs. Quite often, at the end, MS Dhoni and Suresh Raina would take the game away from us.
