Chennai, Feb 16: Stand-in skipper Ross Taylor spoke to the media about New Zealand’s prospects at the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 after losing comprehensively to India in the warm-up game at Chepauk.

Excerpts from the chat

On the mammoth target

Yeah, I mean you gotta give credit to [MS] Dhoni – [he] batted very well in those last 10- 15 overs and took the game away from us. You know, we got off to a good start, we got some positives. But obviously [there are] some things to work on also.

On the pitch turning out to be conducive to spin

We are not quick turners of the ball and we know that the Indian side always give a good tweak. There is still a lot of room for improvement. The spinners [are] going to play a big part at the World Cup. Hopefully we can play a lot better in the next few matches.

On whether NZ, suffering a poor run of late, would be motivated by the fact that they have qualified for the World Cup semi-finals on five previous occasions

We’ve got take positives from somewhere. We haven’t played quite as well as we would have liked in the last six or seven months but hopefully we can get off to a good start and make the quarter-finals and then take it all the way from there.

On NZ playing their first game (against Kenya) in Chennai – the location of their disappointing warm-up game against India

Yeah, it’s going to be played on the same pitch so I think we have got a bit of a head start over Kenya. It’s going be a day game so I think we will still play a pretty good wicket.