Having sunk to defeat on Day 5 at Lord’s against England, Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni nonetheless looked forward to an exciting series ahead in the post-match presentation. Speaking to the media about the match and India’s injury woes, the captain lauded his team’s effort.
On the Indian team’s performance:
Considering the situation and what really happened to our side, [losing] Zaheer Khan early [to imjury] was a big blow which meant we had to go on with three bowlers. And it wasn’t really spinning much which meant it would be tough for Harbhajan [Singh] to contain the opposition. The fast bowlers stepped up [to the challenge]. You don’t usually see fast bowlers bowling close to 60 overs in a game. As a bowling department, we did whatever we could. Unfortunately, after that we lost Sachin [Tendulkar] in the sense he was unfit for the game, he got a viral infection. In the second innings Gautam Gambhir got injured. Overall in the second innings most of the batsmen batted at different places, that was more forced than anything else. Overall five days of good cricket. Kevin Pietersen batted really well for them [England] in the first innings, [Matt] Prior in the second innings and we had a couple of good innings from our side also. Overall [I am] quite happy with the kind of cricket that was played for the last five days.
