da betsson： Indian skipper, Saurav Ganguly, blamed the wicket for his team’s poorperformance after they suffered a crushing 84-run defeat at the handsof New Zealand in the second match of the Coca Cola Cup at R
Rex Clementine21-Jul-2001Indian skipper, Saurav Ganguly, blamed the wicket for his team’s poorperformance after they suffered a crushing 84-run defeat at the handsof New Zealand in the second match of the Coca Cola Cup at R.Premadasa Stadium on Friday.”That was not the best one-day wicket to bat on” said a disappointedGanguly “The ball was not coming onto the bat and that’s going to makethings difficult for the side batting second.”New Zealand won the toss and elected to bat, but struggled to get 211.However, in return they came out with a stellar performance in thefield by bowling out the opposition for 127. Ganguly’s poor formcontinued and he managed only five in 17 balls, but looked not overlyworried about the defeat.”This is just the beginning of the tournament” said the Indianskipper. “We’ve got five more games to go and hopefully we can turnthings around in the matches to come.”Man of the Match Nathan Astle agreed with Ganguly’s remarks on thewicket. “I think the wicket behaved a little better when we batted butwas a little idle when they batted. It went up and down a bit andbecame a little bit slower. So I suppose we had the better of thebatting conditions” remarked the opener.Despite Astle’s hundred New Zealand only managed 211 at the end of theday. “Their bowlers bowled particularly well throughout the day,especially Harbhajan Singh with a lot of turn and variation” saidAstle. Harbhajan finished up with impressive figures of 2/25 in hisquota of 10 overs.”We were going to go for the kill in the last ten overs. But theybowled even better at the death, specially the two left-handers,” headded.New Zealand skipper Stephen Fleming was delighted with his side’sbowling performance. “Nathan’s hundred was obviously a good one. Butmore important was the way all the bowlers bowled.”The New Zealand new ball bowlers Darryl Tuffey and Kyle Mills set thetune by bowling impressive spells. Especially Tuffey who had figuresof 7-2-7-1 in his first spell, which put the Indians on the backfoot. “Both of them bowled really well and set the stage for theothers” remarked the captain. “This is the best performance I haveseen them involved in.”Summing up the side’s performance Fleming said, “We have improved alot from the last game. But we still want to improve on things likeplaying the spinners better.”