Windies vs India, 2nd ODI – Who Said What

It was an eventful day for Team India as they won the second ODI against the Windies by 59 runs (DLS Method). Skipper Virat Kohli, in particular, excelled on the day and played some excellent cricket. Even though the track wasn’t easy to bat on, the 30-year-old showed great application and brought up his 42nd ODI century in this record-breaking knock.

Moreover, he broke the record of Javed Miandad to become the highest ODI run-scorer against Windies. To add on to it, this was Kohli’s 6th century as the captain against Windies. Thus, he even broke the record of Ricky Ponting who had 5 centuries against New Zealand as the skipper. Last but not the least, Virat even went past Sourav Ganguly to become India’s second-highest scorer in ODI cricket.

In the shadow of this knock, there was another gem of an innings from young Shreyas Iyer. He walked out in sort of a difficult situation at number five. Iyer played the perfect partner to Kohli and got his fifty at a strike rate of over 100. Even though Windies pulled things back in the last 10 overs, India got to 279/7 in 50 overs.

The Windies batting order failed miserably yet again in this game. Chris Gayle, just after becoming the leading run-scorer for Windies in ODIs, got out for 11 runs. Except for Evin Lewis (65 runs) and Nicholas Pooran (42 runs), no one else really applied themselves well. From 148/3, they collapsed to 182/8 before they were bundled out for 210 runs. Bhuvneshwar Kumar was excellent with the ball and picked up a four-wicket haul.

Jason Holder, the Windies captain, said

Extremely disappointing. We bowled really well and the game was in our hands, we lost crucial wickets at the back end to lose the game. We need to take responsibility, we need to take the game deep. The pitch was pretty good and the bowlers despite the humid conditions did well. The batters have to take the responsibility. They have been letting us down far too often.

Virat Kohli, the India captain and the Man of the Match, said

Good outing with the bat. Exactly why we wanted to bat first. If you saw the later half of the West Indies innings, it was difficult to bat on. I think the rain in between helped them else it would have been tough to bat in the middle overs. We knew that anything over 270 would be challenging.

Feels good to get a hundred when the team wanted me to get one. Shikhar and Rohit didn’t get a big one. One of the top three has always got the big one. A senior man had to step up and today was my opportunity to step up. It was important to string in a lot of dot balls.

The batting became a little easy thanks to the rain when Hetymer and Pooran were batting together. It was tough gripping the ball when it went into the outfield. It was about staying in there and hoping one wicket will put pressure on them and luckily we got the wickets.

The number of left-handers work in favour of Kuldeep and that’s why we went in with him rather than Chahal. He is more lethal against the left-handers because of his variations and the lines that he bowls to them. Kedar was precise as well. With the number of left-handers, you want to go with a chinaman bowler rather than a leggie.

With Jadeja playing, it helps our balance. He (Shreyas Iyer) is a very confident guy and has the right attitude. Really got the tempo going and took the pressure off me. After I got out, he got the extra runs as well.