Jan 25th 2007
 

CUTTACK, India - West Indies stand in captain Chris Gayle spoke with the media after the 20 run loss to India in Cuttack on Wednesday. Following are excerpts from his responses:

 

On the pitch:

It’s wasn’t the best wicket to play (One Day) cricket, as you saw the first over the ball popped out of the pitch, it was a bit dusty and slow but having said that we still had to play on it and in the end India came out on top on it.

 

On getting so near yet falling short:

So near but so far, we need to bring it home, it doesn’t make sense for us to bring it so close and then we can’t finish it off. We need the guys in the middle to come in and finish the game for us. Shiv (Chanderpaul) is batting well, you have to give credit to him, we need someone to stay there with him and build a big partnership and hopefully they can bring it home.

 

On whether the team is missing a spinner:

Not today, I only bowled one over, Marlon (Samuels) didn’t bowl at all. I thought the seamers, especially Daren Powell who took three big wickets, were doing a pretty good job, there wasn’t any need for any spinner at that time. Dwayne Smith bowled well as well and Dwayne Bravo also.

 

On India’s last three wickets scoring the bulk of their runs:

You have to give credit to (Dinesh) Karthik, he played well, (Ajit) Agarkar came in and they really put up a good show for the India team. It just slipped away from us there, it’s cricket and we have to go to the drawing board and try to capitalize and see what we can get out of those situations.

 

On the Windies batting:

We lost crucial wickets at crucial times. It is something we have to work on. It has been affecting us in the past. We have to be cricketing efficient. Coming up to the World Cup to play catch up cricket won’t be easy.

 

On whether the pitch deteriorated significantly:

It didn’t get worse, it was playing the same way. The dew came in and the ball was coming onto the bat so it was a bit easier to bat on, it’s just that the spinners did well for the Indian team.

 

On Sachin Tendulkar’s bowling:

With his experience I thought he bowled well, he made the Indian team proud. Sachin has been getting a few wickets and hopefully we can try and keep him out and try and score more runs off of him as well.

 

On whether he enjoyed the challenge of captaincy:

It’s another challenge. I enjoyed it. It was pretty good, the guys supported me out there and I am just looking forward to the future and hopefully the next couple of games we can win and level the series.

 

On the Indian score of 189:

The target was gettable but we lost early wickets that put us under pressure. Shiv batted well but it was just for us to capitalize on the middle.

 

On if it will be more difficult to win the next two games:

It’s going to be difficult, we are behind the eight ball, we can’t afford to lose anymore games. We can only level the series now. Shiv is going well, hopefully we can support him and play around him.

 

Notes: The West Indies travels to Chennai today, Thursday and will practice tomorrow Friday.

 

A decision on captain Brian Lara’s availability for the third One Day International will be made on Saturday morning prior to the start of the day/night game.