Darren Sammy asks Windies to be proactive against spin

Mirpur: West Indies skipper Darren Sammy has drawn a clear lesson from his team’s opening loss to India in the World Twenty20: any team that does not respond strongly to spinners will end up on the losing side in Bangladesh.

After the defeat on Sunday, Sammy said: “I think we just didn’t respond well enough to their [India’s] spinners and they bowled wicket-to-wicket. Normally, if you let a spinner settle, he will get his line and length and variation of his pace, which he wants to bowl. In both games, they have settled into a nice rhythm. They control the pace of the innings from there on.”

Despite the defeat, Sammy was hopeful of an improved showing from his team. “Round one has gone to India but I have a strong feeling that we will meet again, so we are looking forward to that,” he said.

Sammy highlighted the fact that India reached the target with only two balls to spare and said he reckoned that the fight shown by his team would help in the long run. “We wanted to try and take the game as far deep as possible into the last overs. Net run rate normally comes into play in these tournaments. They getting the runs with only two balls to spare — it is a plus for us,” said Sammy who sportingly heaped praise on India’s medium pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who gave away just three runs from his three overs

“I think credit must go to Kumar who swung the ball both in and out and he bowled in good areas. He was bowling to the two most dangerous openers in this format of the game and he kept them quiet. There is no need to panic for us as we have three more games left in the tournament, and we back ourselves to win them.”

Sammy feels that Indians used the conditions very well. “I think they used the conditions quite well. India loves to chase, so we knew once we lost the toss we were going to bat first. It’s a fact that we just didn’t bat. I guess India just bowled well. Normally whether you bat or bowl first, the start is very important and in the games that we have played, we have got good starts from Chris Gayle and Dwayne Smith at the top. And when we bowl, normally we get good starts from Badree and whoever is bowling. In this game, we didn’t get the best of games, both bowling and batting,” Sammy said.