Durban, Jan 12: Team India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni on Thursday admitted that his team was outplayed in all the three departments of the game by the hosts. Chasing a record total of 290 runs, the visitors were bundled out for 154 in 35.4 overs.

Dhoni said that his team relies on a good start but, unfortunately, in this match it didn’t happen and the team could never recover from the early losses.

Excerpts from an interview:

On being outplayed in the 1st ODI:

Well, completely to start off. They [South Africa] got off to a good start and as part of our strategy we went in with four bowlers and quite a few part-timers. Ashish [Nehra] had a bad day which meant we had to bowl close to 15 overs in the middle so we were under pressure. But I think the part-timers did a real good job for us to bring us back into the game. When we were chasing I don’t think we got the start which was needed because we are a side which banks on a good start while chasing. If we have wickets in hand then we look to chase even 8 or 9 runs per over. It never really happened for us in this game.

On chasing a 290 runs target on Kingsmead wicket:

You know Kingsmead is one of those wickets where you look to chase something around 250 rather than 290. Anything above that is really difficult to chase.

On ODI teammates- Yuvraj Singh, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma:

Well, I think they did not get too many practice sessions really. They are here for quite some time but the last few days here at Durban it was raining and we never got the chance to have net sessions. I think as we go into the series they will get acclimatized to the conditions. And, hopefully, we will make the series more interesting.

On the importance of the series before the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011:

It is important for some of the youngsters to get going. The conditions will be totally different when we play the World Cup but we would like to score runs, field well and take wickets.