Chennai, Dec 11: Stand-in captain Gautam Gambhir lauded his bowlers for their performance in the fifth ODI here despite some hard-hitting by Kieron Pollard that threatened to wrest the game away from the hosts.

Gambhir spoke about the game and India’s bench strength at the post-match presentation.

Excerpts:

On Kieron Pollard’s knock

We all know what Kieron Pollard can do on his day but a lot of credit goes to the bowlers; they stuck to the task and they stuck to their line and length and we all knew it’s just a matter of one ball. The way he batted he could have taken the game away from us but then all credit goes to the bowlers

On his brief to the bowlers

You couldn’t have said too many things because every ball that was middling [Pollard’s] bat was going out of the ground. But this is what one-day cricket is all about; you need to stick to your strength and try and bowl a good line and length and try and just change [certain things]. Like when [Ravindra ] Jadeja [was] bowling around the wicket, we always knew that if he could bowl in the rough, one [ball] could spin and [Pollard] could mistime it and then there [was] always a chance [of a dismissal]. But we saw that if he middled the ball, it could go out a long way.

On 267 being a good score on the difficult pitch

Well it was [a good score] in a way. Manoj [Tiwary] batted and your first hundred is always special in international cricket. Hopefully he can get many more from here [on]. We always knew that 240-250 on this kind of track would be a good total because we have some quality spinners in our line-up. Though we were missing [R] Ashwin, I feel the way Rahul [Sharma] and Jadeja were bowling [there] was good rhythm […] We thought 240 would be a good total but then 267 was always welcome.

On the youngsters in the squad

The [greater] the bench strength, the better it is. The more competition you have, [the better it is] for Indian cricket […] Competition always keeps you on your toes. It shows that Indian cricket has a bright future going forward and hopefully the guys can take it on from here.