Pollard: The toss is 50-50, no one knows what’s going to happen. It has been difficult – three days quarantine and one day practice. We have to come out and perform. It’s a big field, we need to rotate the strike. Roach comes back into our XI, Fabian Allen as well gets an opportunity in 50-over cricket and Darren Bravo gets a game. I know they’re looking forward to the challenge.
Rohit: It looks a good pitch and might be slightly better to bat under lights. Happy to be back – playing for the country is the priority. I haven’t played cricket for a couple of months but these things happen when you play all the time. Obviously, a historic day in Indian cricket, playing the 1000th ODI. It’s been a long journey and we’ve had ups and downs. We’ve got some positive cases in our camp, a couple of new faces.
India vs West Indies 1st ODI Highlights today, Sunday 6-2-2022 – 1st ODI (D/N), West Indies tour of India from Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad.
ICC Rankings Test, ODI & T20I
India win the toss and opt to bowl first.
India team: Rohit Sharma (capt), Ishan Kishan, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant (wk), Suryakumar Yadav, Deepak Hooda, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Yuzvendra Chahal, Prasidh Krishna, Mohammed Siraj.
West Indies team: Brandon King, Shai Hope (wk), Shamarh Brooks, Darren Bravo, Nicholas Pooran, Kieron Pollard (capt), Jason Holder, Fabian Allen, Alzarri Joseph, Kemar Roach, Akeal Hosein.
Match Timings: 08:00 GMT | 13:30 Local
Umpires – KN Ananthapadmanabhan, Nitin Menon
TV Umpires – Anil Chaudhary
Match Referee – Manu Nayyar
Reserve Umpire – Jayaraman Madanagopal
Match number – ODI no. 4353
Suryakumar Yadav: “I think things were really clear. I didn’t tell him [Hooda] anything. He has played domestic cricket for the 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 as 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.”
Post Match Presentation.
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 is 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 a 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.”
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.
Yuzvendra Chahal is the Player of the Match
