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| Tuesday, 3 August 2004 |
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Lanka's total was gettable says Ganguly by Sa'adi Thawfeeq Losing Indian captain Sourav Ganguly said that his team's poor batting cost them the Asia Cup final against Sri Lanka on Sunday. "There is no point blaming the wicket. It definitely was a hard wicket and it wasn't easy to play specially a one day game where you need to score runs pretty quickly It was never easy batting second, but we still should have got to 228. It was gettable," said Ganguly. "We never expected the pitch to be so difficult. But we had the batting to get to the total. We had seven batters to get those runs but there were not enough partnerships. We were not able to rotate the strike, which I found surprising. Normally people like Lakshman, Dravid, and Yuvraj rotate the ball after 15 overs very well," Ganguly continued. "We didn't expect the wicket for the final to be so much in favour of the spinners. On wickets like this you expect the spinners to bowl well. The two main spinners from both sides went for nearly 50. It was the part-timers who did the job. It was a wicket if the spinners bowled in the right areas it wasn't easy to get away. These are the challenges you face when you tour. The wickets tend to suit the home team and it was an important toss to win," he said. Ganguly said that any loss was disappointing and added: "For us it is more disappointing because we had a team which played well. We were expecting to win this competition. It didn't happen and it is disappointing. It is also an eye opener." "It is difficult why we are losing so many finals. There is definitely something which we are not doing right. We have played all around the world in the last two years England, Australia, Pakistan and South Africa. As a team we cannot lose so many finals," said Ganguly. Under his leadership India was won only one out of 13 finals. Ganguly said that his team needed to improve in all areas and that the batting had not been upto standards especially in the final. "We have got to get our thought process right. However much of talent you have the thinking process has to be right," he said. |
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