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| Darren Sammy, on Thursday |
Visakhapatnam: After two close matches, the Mumbai Test and the Cuttack one-dayer, West Indies captain Darren Sammy feels that a win is “just round the corner” for his team.
The Caribbean side will play the second one-day International (ODI) of the series against India on Friday.
Speaking at the pre-match media conference on Thursday, Sammy said: “We keep getting close… Now, we have to find ways to win. We did manage to take India all the way in the first ODI and were almost able to defend a low total.
“So, on one hand while it was disappointing to lose the game, we also got a lot of confidence from that match. We will like to carry it forward in the series. A win is just round the corner for us.”
Asked if the team was lacking in the mental or technical aspect, Sammy said that it was a combination of both. “A little bit of both I guess… India have been in good form of late… So, somehow they manage to get to the finishing line. We are a young team… I don’t know if the problem is mentally, technically or tactically, but we want to compete with the best in the world.
“It’s all about that last push, the killer instinct to cross the finishing line. We hope to put up a more fighting performance tomorrow (Friday).”
However, he admitted that lack of consistency was a definite problem for his team. “In the Tests, we couldn’t put together two innings of good batting at a stretch. We need to correct that… There’s lack of consistency in our performances. For the batsmen, it is about converting the starts into bigger innings… Like Rohit Sharma did for India. So it’s all about concentrating harder and playing better.”
Even after snaring five Indian wickets pretty quickly, West Indies couldn’t win the Cuttack match. But Sammy feels that more than their lapse, it was Rohit and Ravindra Jadeja’s good batting which took the match away from them.
“Rohit and Jadeja batted very well… Those two guys changed the match. But we had our moments… It’s not about ‘what ifs’… We believe in ourselves as a team and we have to do well.”
Speaking about the wicket, Sammy said: “It looks like a good ODI wicket… But then, the wicket in Cuttack was also good and we saw what happened. So the batsmen will have to put their heads down when they bat and the bowlers will have to bowl in the right areas.”
He, however, made nothing clear about the playing XI. ”
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