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Regional News
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We Played Pretty Well - Lara CHENNAI, India - West Indies captain Brian Lara spoke with the media after the victory over India in the third One Day International in Chennai. Following are excerpts from his responses. On Marlon Samuels possibly turning the corner: I don't know about turning the corner but what I do know is that in the last two wins that we've had Marlon Samuels was a top performer with the bat so I think that is something very good for us. We are trying to build a lot more match winners in the team. We've got the likes of Chris Gayle and (Shiv) Chanderpaul, (Ramnaresh) Sarwan so we need a lot more. You look at Australia, all the guys are match winners in the Australian team. Hopefully we can get a lot more out of Marlon, I think it is very important that he is consistent and that's what we're going to be aiming for. He knows where his game is at the moment and he would love to improve it, he would love to be talked about so we just have to hope and pray that things work out for him. On winning without Chanderpaul: We can't depend on any one person. We do appreciate the fact that Chanderpaul is in form. He had a slight pain in his knee and we prefer to rest him than anything else. We're not going to win the World Cup on the likes of Chris Gayle and Chanderpaul alone, or Sarwan, as I said we need to get a lot more guys performing at the top level and it was Marlon Samuels today, hopefully it will be someone else on Wednesday. On whether the Windies has arrested India's momentum: I know for a fact that we were in the series. I thought we played pretty well. Not many teams come to India and take the game into the 40th or 50th over every single time so I was still very proud of the guys even though we were two nil down. I know we were just around the corner from a win. Hopefully we are picking up some momentum now. We have one game left and we have the World Cup coming up so I think it's very important, this is a very crucial game for us in Baroda. On Robin Uttappa: I've seen him bat a couple of times. It was unexpected, I must say. All the shots that he played were excellent shots. He looks a very compact player, a very good player, very talented. At times today he made the bowling look very easy, fortunately for us when Chris Gayle came on he got out. Credit must be given to him for the start that he gave India, at one point it looked like it was 400 that we were going to chase. On Rahul Dravid saying India lost the game in the last 15 overs of their innings: We gained momentum in those last 15 overs. At the interval we talked about it, we had to continue that momentum and not go back and search for a start. Unfortunately Chris (Gayle) didn't get off but the likes of Devon Smith and Marlon Samuels looked very confident. The scoring rate was above run-a-ball for quite some time in the game. We played well and that is when (during the last 15 overs of the Indian innings) is when we wrested the game away from India. On his own innings: I was happy to make a contribution. I met Marlon Samuels who was on the go, play a supporting role and try to stay there until the end, unfortunately I didn't. I was quite happy to get some runs. On whether the lower order panicked in finishing off the game: I think we didn't finish it off professionally, including myself. At the end of the day we have a victory and these little mistakes we have to iron out and ensure that it doesn't happen in the future. You don't want to go into a World Cup match and end it like that. You want to be as convincing as possible. |
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