Hardik Pandya defends India after 4-run loss to West Indies in 1st T20I: 'A young team will make mistakes'

India captain Hardik Pandya has blamed the loss of wickets in the death overs as a reason for his team’s four-run defeat to hosts West Indies in the opening T20I of the five-match series on Thursday. Chasing a 150-run target, India were restricted to 145/9 with Pandya and Samson getting out in the 15th over and Axar Patel in the 19th over. The skipper after the game admitted that the loss of wickets “halted” India’s chase and that a young team is bound to make mistakes. “In T20 cricket, if you lose wickets, it becomes difficult to chase down any total, that’s exactly what happened. A couple of hits can change the momentum towards you. When we lost a couple of wickets, that halted our chase,” Hardik said in the post-match presentation ceremony. “We were right in the chase and quite comfortable there. We made some errors which costed us the game which is fine. A young team will make mistakes. We will grow together. “Throughout the game, we were in control of the game which was the positive in this game. Good four games coming ahead.” Talking about the decision to play three spinners; Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal and Axar Patel, Hardik said that he wants to play ‘KulCha’ together. “It (playing three spinners) was more to do with the conditions. We would like to give opportunities to the two wristies (Kuldeep and Chahal) to play together. Axar adds a very good component in his batting as well. We felt that was the right combination,” he said. Hardik also praised India’s debutants — Mukesh Kumar and Tilak Varma. After making his Test and ODI debuts on the West Indies tour, Mukesh returned match figures of 0/24 in his first T20I. Tilak Varma was India’s highest run-getter with a knock of 39 off 22 balls.

He dreamt of playing for India 🇮🇳

Today he walked on the field with the #TeamIndia jersey on 👌🏻

Proud moment for young Tilak Varma 👍🏻

Full chat Coming Soon 🔜 on https://t.co/Z3MPyeKtDz #WIvIND | @TilakV9 pic.twitter.com/Up0bLWgkSl

— BCCI (@BCCI) August 3, 2023

“Mukesh (Kumar) - to have this two weeks which he has had in West Indies - where he made debuts in all three formats is really good. Genuinely, he’s a nice guy. He has a very good heart, wants to contribute for the team. He bowled a couple of overs back to back and that was fantastic. “Tilak - very pleasing to see the way he started his innings. Not a bad way to start your international cricket with a couple of sixes. There’s confidence and the fearlessness they have. They are going to do wonders for India,” Pandya said. West Indies captain Rovman Powell was a delighted man after his team took an early 1-0 lead in the series. “It’s a very good feeling. We talked about starting this series on a positive note and the guys did that. It was our game to lose, they didn’t have a set batter and I was confident going into the last over,” he said. Powell added that the series will be decided on how the local batters perform against Indian spinners in the middle overs as they have the ability to score big toward the end. “This series will be decided on how West Indies batters bat against spin in the middle overs. We have the power to load in the backend. The left-handers like Pooran, Hetmyer and Mayers will be key in that aspect,” Powell added. The skipper praised Player of the Match Jason Holder who returned match figures of 2/19 and added that while scoring is tough in the Caribbean, runs would come once a batter gets settled in the middle. “I knew it was going to be difficult to start in the Caribbean. But once you get a start, runs is there. Jason (Holder) was fantastic today. He summed up the conditions very well,” he signed off.