Washington Sundar and Yuzvendra Chahal spin India to comfortable victory
The spin duo took seven wickets between them to dismiss West Indies for 176, and Rohit Sharma's fifty helped ace the chase in 28 overs
The spin duo took seven wickets between them to dismiss West Indies for 176, and Rohit Sharma's fifty helped ace the chase in 28 overs
Scorer: Chandan Duorah | Commentator: Deivarayan Muthu
8.10pm That's all we have for you from this game. Hope you enjoyed our coverage as much as we did bringing it to you. Until next time, this is Deivarayan Muthu signing off on the behalf of Sidharth Monga and Chandan Duorah. Stay safe and take care.
Yuzvendra Chahal is the Player of the Match: Washy created the pressure with his two wickets. When I saw his spell, I knew that the ball is turning on this pitch so I can flight the ball a bit. On these kinds of pitches, even if you flight the ball, it's not that easy to hit down the ground. I spoke to Rohit bhai, Virat bhaiyya, and realised that pace is important on this wicket. My usual slower pace won't work, because the quicker balls were spinning. I changed my line also, made it more middle and off. I bowl according to the pitch. I knew that here, the batters will find it easy to hit if I slowed it up. So I continued bowling quicker. You can bowl the odd slower one for variation. When I came back from South Africa, I watched each of my games three or four times to see where I was missing. I spoke to Rohit bhaiyya also after coming back and with Paras Mhambrey sir, our bowling coach. I worked on where I felt I was missing there.
Pollard: Of course, losing with 22 overs to spare is not ideal. Not being able to bat 50 overs - we've got to take stock of that. We got to dig deeper and get better with techniques, again myself included. Having said that, not the result we wanted, but credit to the guys for turning up. It has been a difficult last three days. It was pretty wet and the ball was sliding on [later in the evening]. When we batted, it held up and spun. We have to find a way. The lower-order batting from Jason and Fabian. Joseph and Akeal Hosein did the work for us with the ball - those were the positives. We will come back and see what happens.
Rohit: In patches, I don't believe in a perfect game. We want to keep getting better as a team and all in all it was a great effort from everyone. We spoke of what we wanted to achieve and we ticked all the boxes. They [Holder-Allen] created that partnership and we wanted to get them out. I'm open to a lot of things if we need to change. The end goal is we should be able to achieve what the team wants - whether we want to bat or bowl differently. Honestly, I don't think we need to change a whole lot. All I will ask of the players it to challenge yourself and be innovative. I've been off for a while and didn't play for two months. I was back home, though, and hitting balls. It's about finding rhythm as a batter and I was confident going into this game. The pitch had something in it. There was softness early on and in this particular game the toss became important. But, if you keep ticking all the boxes, you can restrict any team and the same goes with the batting. Toss - I honestly want to take it away from the play, but if you win the toss, you take advantage of it.
Suryakumar Yadav: I think things were really clear. I didn't tell him [Hooda] anything. He has played domestic cricket for last seven years. It was important for him to stay till the end, and his confidence was spot on. I really liked it. Pollard told me a few things. 'Midwicket was open, why are you not flicking like you do in IPL' but it was different here. I feel the track was almost the same as it was in the afternoon. But due to dew, it became slightly easier in the chase.
7.45pm That is that. India coast to a six-wicket victory in their 1000th ODI, which lasted only 71.5 overs. Washington and Chahal, the spinners, set it up by taking seven wickets between them to limit WI to 176. Rohit then played a blinder at the top on a tricky Motera track and although he and Kohli fell in the same over to Joseph, Suryakumar and debutant Hooda completed the job for India with plenty to spare. Do stick with us for the presentation.
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