West Indies skipper Holder on batting failure, Ambrose's speech and battle for quarters

Jason Holder was speaking with the media after India’s beat West Indies in the World Cup. You can also listen to the full press conference in the audio widget above. Q. Jason, can you take us through the last few overs when you had Marlon Samuels and Dwayne Smith bowling when there was still a chance to win? JASON HOLDER: Yeah, at that stage our front end bowlers had given it their all. We were in a stage where we needed wickets, and we had two spells from each of our frontline bowlers, and just at the end felt a little tired and just couldn’t get the job done, so I just felt if Dwayne had gotten a wicket earlier and given the ball, hopefully could work some magic. [caption id=“attachment_2140179” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Jason Holder. AFP[/caption] Q. Jason, how shocked do you think you were in the end with your total? JASON HOLDER: I think we were a little bit more short than that. I thought the wicket was a good wicket to bat on, but we just didn’t play ourselves when we batted. I thought initially we should have been looking in excess of 270. I think the wicket was good enough to get that, we just didn’t. Q. Jason, the West Indies brought in Kemar Roach to bowl on a pretty fast track, but then you chose to bat first. Any regrets on doing that, seeing how much pressure you had put India on when they batted? JASON HOLDER: No, there’s no regrets. I believe if the game – if we had set up the game properly, would have bat, it would have been a different game in the end. We’ve just got to put up our hands when we’ve done wrong, and we just didn’t bat well enough today, and we just didn’t get enough runs on the board. Q. Jason, at what stage you thought the game actually slipped from your hands? JASON HOLDER: Well, it’s clear to me we just didn’t make enough runs. Yes, we did get wickets early on but we just fell away in the middle. It’s tough trying to defend 182 on a good batting track in my opinion with a quality batting lineup. I think we just didn’t bat well enough to do it. Q. If I can help you, that six by Mahendra Singh Dhoni, was that the turning point? JASON HOLDER: Oh, just can’t look at one shot. It’s an entire game we played. I feel that looking at one shot is just wrong and lazy in my opinion. I just think we didn’t make enough runs, and then we just weren’t able to close it off. Q. Jason, 26 extras with the bowlers, clearing 19 wides. How important against the UAE is it to get it right before the knockout stage? JASON HOLDER: Yeah, in the circumstances where we bowl, we needed to be aggressive. It was quite clear that the short bowl was working for us, so I asked my bowlers to be aggressive. I would give up one or two wides for that. Probably 19 is a little bit too much, but in looking for wickets you have to take risks, and that was just ours, to deal with the short delivery. Q. You spoke, I think, last week or the week before about the challenges of coming in, young captain and building your sort of authority within the dressing room. What do you say to those guys? It was obvious to all as you touched on there that the application was poor. Do you subtly make that point? Do you angrily make that point? What do you say to those guys because some of those batting displays were terrible. JASON HOLDER: Well, I have a very good relationship with most players. It may not require me to be speaking to them in a team setting. I may just pull them one-on-one and just have a chat. We just sort of unlace things, try to work out stuff. Obviously we didn’t bat well in this game, we didn’t bat well in the last game, so we just need to address a few areas. But there are ways that I will go about doing it, but we just need to be honest with ourselves and we just didn’t bat well enough in these last two games, and the batsmen just need to be accountable for putting runs on the board. Q. How do you reassess your situation before going to the last game against UAE because still, it’s not clear whether you guys will be able to qualify or not. At this situation what does the captain and the team do? JASON HOLDER: Well, we’ve got to sit and wait for it. There are a few more preliminary games to be played. We’ve got one more game and we’ve got some time off before that last game, so we’ve got to sit and wait and see how the table looks before our last game, and then we come up with a plan and a strategy how we go forward. Q. What did Curtly Ambrose say to you guys out on the ground before you went out to bowl? JASON HOLDER: Well, he just gave us his normal speech. He’s very passionate. He’s very into what he does, and he just tried to instill that confidence in us that the game wasn’t finished. Just runs on the board are runs on the board. They still have to get them, and it was just important that we didn’t go out there and just roll over. I just commend the way the guys went out there and fought to get six wickets. Trying to defend 183 is commendable but just unfortunately we just couldn’t seem to be able to do it. Q. Even if you beat the UAE as we touched on, it’s no guarantee that you’ll make the quarterfinals. Is it a bit unnerving knowing that you might have to rely on other results now? JASON HOLDER: Well, I can only control what I can control. Whatever happens in those last preliminary games is beyond my control. What I can control is the game against UAE, and I can assure you that we are going to win that game by all means, and we just need to be aggressive and finish this preliminary round in a good manner.