Cuttack, Nov 30: Though he hailed the efforts of the lower-order batsmen for pulling off a thrilling win over the West Indies in the first one-dayer here today, India's stand-in skipper Virender Sehwag felt that there was no excuse for the batsmen's poor show.
Chasing an easy 212, India stumbled to 59 for five before riding on Rohit Sharma's 72 and spirited showings by Varun Aaron and Umesh Yadav to scrape past the target with seven balls to spare.
“In India you hardly see the team tottering at 59/5. Our batsmen made mistakes. Hope we will come up with strong batting performance in next games,” Sehwag said after their dramatic win.
“We have to learn from our mistakes. There were two good balls. The ball came in and we (myself and Virat Kohli) played early and made mistakes,” he added.
Sehwag was particularly critical of Parthiv Patel, Gautam Gambhir and Suresh Raina's shot selections.
“There were three soft dismissals of Parthiv Patel, Gautam Gambhir and Suresh Raina. We have to bat really well in coming games. There is no excuse for anybody to not scoring runs.”
Sehwag hoped that they would put up a better show in the coming matches.
“We have to back our batting. We have some exciting youngsters playing for last three four years. But I am happy with bowling and fielding.”
