After suffering a one-sided defeat against the strong visiting side Indian cricket team in the ODI series opener, the hosts New Zealand cricket team captain Kane Williamson claimed that they should have played smartly and also credited the Indian bowlers.
In the first ODI at Napier, New Zealand was bundled out for just 157 runs in 38 overs and India chased down their target (revised target 156 in 49 overs) comfortably in 34.5 overs after losing only two wickets.
After losing that game, Williamson told the media, “It is not our best performance and I think you need to look at it in small bits. It is not about jumping … or any knee jerk reactions to our performance. It is about identifying some areas we need to get better at and when we get it together we can beat anybody but we are against a very strong team in India.”
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The Kiwi skipper feels that they should have played a little bit more smartly on that surface as he believes that the visitors have exposed them in some areas.
He added, “The surface wasn’t bad but different to what we were expecting. From our perspective, we should have played little bit more smartly on that surface. They perhaps exposed us in some areas. The length that they bowled in that wicket was outstanding and did make scoring hard to achieve, so lot of learning to come.”
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Taking more about the surface, Williamson added that it wasn’t their expected free-flowing surface and it doesn’t allow getting momentum easily.
He said, “It was one of those surfaces where it is hard to get momentum and they showed us that it wasn’t a competitive total to chase. It was not as free-flowing as we were expecting but it is important we move on to the next game, the surface will again be different and we have to be little bit better.”
The Kiwi skipper claimed that they have to make some better decisions to move out easily from this situation.
Williamson said, “I mentioned about the batting but there were some positives with the bowling but collectively we need to adjust little bit better and often it can come down to make a couple of better decisions”
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The Indian spinners dominated in the game by picking up seven wickets. The left-arm spinner Kuldeep Yadav (4/39) bagged four wickets while the leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal (2/43) and the off-spinner Kedar Jadhav (1/17) picked up two and one wickets respectively.
Williamson credited the Indian bowlers by saying, “Their whole bowling unit did not give anything away, it was hard to gain any sort of momentum and the spinners bowled really nicely. The middle period… with the spinners on, the way their wrist spinners bowled with pace and the length it was classy. We knew they are good, we have played them a number of times and they certainly were very good.”
Also the Indian pacer Mohammed Shami provided a perfect start in this game and led the side to the victory by winning the Player of the Match award. After dismissing both the Kiwi openers (Martin Guptill 5 and Colin Munro 8) at the very early stages through the bowled, he dismissed Mitchell Santner through the lbw. He finished the game with the bowling figure of 6-2-19-3.
Talking about Shami, Williamson quoted, “He (Shami) was hitting nice areas, he was very demanding and bowled with good pace. I guess you throw those combinations and you get early wickets.”
Though he admitted that it wasn’t a great start for the hosts but there is great opportunity to be better with the time progress.
Williamson said, “It is not a great start for us to the series but I guess any experience you have, against the world no 1 team there is great opportunity to get better.”
