No need to panic; India reached target with just two balls to spare - Darren Sammy

Darren Sammy

Dhaka, March 24 (IANS/CMC) West Indies captain Darren Sammy said there was no need to press the panic button in the wake of the loss to India in the team’s opening match of the World Twenty20 championship.

The Caribbean side produced an insipid performance Sunday at the Sher-e-Bangla Stadium to plunge to a disappointing seven-wicket loss to India, and stumble in the first hurdle of their title defence, reports CMC.

Chris Gayle struggled to 34 off 33 balls while Lendl Simmons got 27, as West Indies were restricted to 129 for seven off their 20 overs.

India then paced their innings nicely to reach their target with two balls to spare, with opener Rohit Sharma (62 not out) and Virat Kohli (54) getting half-centuries.

“We just didn’t respond well enough to their spinners – round one goes to India. I have a strong feeling that we will meet again, so we are looking forward to that. They used the conditions quite well. It’s a fact that we just didn’t bat well. We didn’t bat well and we still got to 130,” Sammy said.

“We will take heart from that but we never kicked off in the innings. Simmons played some good blows in the late overs but apart from that we never really got those big overs we required…we didn’t get that big moment and we were always behind the eight-ball.”

He added: “It is no need for us to panic. We have three more first round games to go in the tournament against Bangladesh, Australia and Pakistan and we back ourselves to win all three and reach the semi-finals. We are here to defend our title and we will give our all.”

West Indies were nothing like the team that swept their two official warm-up matches against England and Sri Lanka. Their batsmen were shackled by the new ball seam duo of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohammed Shami before left-arm spinner Ravi Jadeja (3-48) and Man-of-the-Match leg-spinner Amit Mishra (2-18) derailed the innings with incisive spells.

And though the Windies struck early in the India innings to remove opener Shikhar Dhawan without scoring in the first over, their bowlers failed to find the huge effort needed to pull off a come-from-behind victory.

“In the bowling department, though we didn’t bowl as well as we could be we took it down to the end. We tried to take it down to as late as possible – to try and take the game as deep as possible into the last overs,” Sammy explained.

“Net run-rate normally comes into play in these tournaments. They getting the runs with two balls to spare, it is a plus for us.

“In the next match we have to bring our A game against the home side. We still believe we will be a force in this tournament so we will aim to come back hard against the Bangladeshis.”

West Indies will take on Bangladesh in their next game on Tuesday at the same venue.

–IANS/CMC

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