Skipper Virat Kohli was critical of India’s performance against West Indies in the one-off Twenty 20 International, opining that his team was sloppy with both the bat and ball and did not deserve to win.
Put into bat, India posted 190/6 on a batting belter but Evin Lewis blasted an unbeaten 125 off 62 balls with as many as 12 sixes and six fours as the reigning T20 champions knocked off the runs in only 18.3 overs, reported PTI.
The Trinidad left-hander got a couple of reprieves with Mohammed Shami and Dinesh Karthik being the offenders. “Even in the first innings, we could have added 25-30 extra. We were on course for 230. And in the field as well, we dropped a few chances and if you don’t grab them you don’t deserve to win,” Kohli said.
“If you give a good start up the order, one batsman has to bat through. I think Dinesh was good, but we needed someone to get 80-90 which a team needs in T20 cricket, I think. Then we didn’t start well with the ball and didn’t field well either. All these games are good feeders of how guys react to situations,” he added.
Kohli feels India’s T20 team is still in a transition and that the team’s fortunes would fluctuate in the near future, “West Indies have a good T20 team, they have carried on with the same team for a couple of years. And in experimental stage, we’d have up and downs. But we need to keep going. One game in the ODIs we lost, we won three convincingly,” he said. “T20s is anyone’s game, and one game doesn’t make a series according to me. Overall, we enjoyed the tour.”
‘Evin played magnificently’
Happy to notch up a nine-wicket win over India, West Indies skipper Carlos Brathwaite said he was happy with the way his team expressed themselves on the field. “Very happy. Yesterday, we asked for the batters to go out and express themselves. I gave them the captain’s incentive, whoever goes and gets a fifty gets half my match fee. We wanted to put smiles on the faces of the fans and that’s what we come back to do,” Brathwaite said.
“We wanted to wrestle the game back against them. We’ve seen the IPL, we know how Bhuvneshwar Kumar bowls at the death and we wanted to make him bowl more in the first few overs and that’s a box ticked.
Brathwaite also heaped praise on centurion Lewis and Kestick Williams for their performances, “Evin just played magnificently. He just played on, played through so big kudos to him. It was a good score on the board, but we always knew we could get it,” he said. “Kestick Williams has produced a fantastic performance, carries it on from Pakistan to Afghanistan and here. His figures might not reflect it, but he got Kohli out, the direct hit, and in the sixth over he had two new batsmen in and that certainly helped,” he added.
Opener Lewis, who was adjudged the Man of the Match for his unbeaten 62-ball 125, said he was not doing well in the last few One-day Internationals, but he stated that he kept believing in himself. “It was a good game. Quality bowlers, and once you get a hundred against a team like India, it’s a good hundred. Five games in a row, in the ODIs, I didn’t do well. But I kept believing in my ability and today I came out trumps,” Lewis said. “Chris going after the bowling makes it easier for me to score, so I’m thankful to bat with him and I hope I can keep doing my best for the West Indies,” he added.
