The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : `You don't play too many Tests like this'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 08, 2006

Sport

Sport - Cricket

`You don't play too many Tests like this'

Special Correspondent

St. John's: Indian captain Rahul Dravid praised his young seamers, saying they impressed him with their attitude. "When we took the new ball, I could see that all of them were hungry to have a bowl," he said. "They wanted to be the one who wanted to be under pressure and win the game."

Dravid also spoke about team selection, the last ball finish and Anil Kumble.

Excerpts:

On the result: Happy, very much so, that we played well. After two days, our position was not very good but we fought back well and in the end we could even have won. So, lots of joy. If you focus only on the result, then you will be sad, but we don't look at it that way.

On the Test: The West Indies bowled well on the first day to restrict us to 240, we didn't bowl too well and they got away to a start. We fought back brilliantly on the third day. We played beautifully on the fourth, bowled very well on the fifth and some of their tailenders batted very well. So it was a great Test, went down to the last ball, and you don't play too many Test matches like this.

On his young fast-medium bowlers: I thought they came back beautifully in the second innings. I was very impressed with their composure. Their spell today was high-class Test quality stuff. We have to realise that our bowlers have certain strengths and we are never going to be 150-plus bowlers and we are never going to bounce people out. We are good at what we do and we should stick to that, not get carried away by some of the hype that gets portrayed around young fast bowlers.

On Anil Kumble: Anil bowled fantastically. He just kept plugging away and that sort of helped us get wickets.

On his thoughts before the final over: I was thinking of a few things, but from Sehwag's end the ball didn't turn much and there was not much in it for the spinner. I was quite confident of going with Sreesanth. I went with the gut feeling. We kept missing the edge, sometimes that is the difference between winning and drawing a Test match. The fine line of one or two centimetres.

On not picking the extra spinner: No regrets. You can always look at the Test match on the fifth day and say I should have done this and done that, but when you start a Test, that's when you have to make the decisions. You look at the wicket on the first day and you think it is going to help the seamers — and it did help them right through the game — and it was a 3-1 wicket.

On dropping Pathan: We picked what we thought was the best XI at the start of the game, the people who were in form. We fully believed in the XI that we picked.

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