“You don’t want a good bat-and-ball competition?” Gambhir asked. “What you want to see, that’s also what we want to see. We also want to see an even contest.
“These bowlers are our bowlers, not someone else’s bowlers. Their careers are at stake, they have worked hard to sit in this dressing room. If it’s an even competition, we’ll see a better game of cricket.”
Despite the conditions, Gambhir said India would examine their failure to defend the total.
“You don’t shrug off any defeat,” Gambhir said. “If you want to keep improving, you don’t want to put anything under the carpet.
“We are a world-champion team so we want to keep improving. These are obviously tough conditions to bowl – we know flat wickets with the dew – obviously it’s tough but we need to figure out and find the way. Especially with the opposition having lost two wickets in the first over and then lost three wickets in the powerplay.
“But again, credit to West Indies, the way Shai Hope and Sherfane batted, we know they are world-class batters especially in the format. It was tough on us but we’re going to keep improving.”
Gambhir praised Mayank for using his speed rather than moving away from his principal strength, which he had done in the first T20I in Lucknow with the occasional change of pace.
“He is a fast bowler, he should bowl like a fast bowler,” Gambhir said of Mayank’s spell. “He isn’t a slower bowler. If you can bowl 150kph, bowl at 150kph, if you bowl at 120kph, bowl at 120kph. When you are playing as a fast bowler, it is your responsibility to bowl fast. And he did that today, getting success.”
India, though, failed to build on those early inroads as Hope and Rutherford added 120 for the fourth wicket, before Romario Shepherd’s unbeaten 34 off 13 sealed a comfortable win for the visitors.
“I’ve played enough cricket to know that games are not decided in the first over. They are a strong T20 side and we respect them,” Gambhir said. “We know how dangerous they are. A game of cricket is won and lost when you play consistently for a period of 40 overs.”
Gambhir credited Hope for maintaining West Indies’ tempo despite the early wickets and staying at the crease until the finish. Hope now has scores of 104, 162*, 52 and 102* in his last four matches on this tour.
“Shai is a world-class cricketer,” Gambhir said. “We respect him for what he’s done in white-ball cricket, not only in the 50-over format but in this format as well. His record speaks for him. What he did today, especially after losing two wickets [in the first over]. To continue batting at run-rate of 12-plus [an over] with Sherfane, just shows how good they are when the wicket is flat and there’s dew. He batted deep which was important and in the end he finished the game. He was able to pace his innings really well.”
“We’ve used him like this for a long period of time, even at the World Cup and before that. It was not just a one-off today. We’ve lost momentum today but we’ve gained a lot of momentum when he’s gone at No. 4 and taken down opposition bowlers,” Gambhir said. “This is international cricket, sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t. And more importantly, we’ve always been flexible with our batting line-up and we’ll continue with it. I’ve said in T20 cricket only the openers are fixed.
“The bottom line is we couldn’t defend 250. They batted extremely well. They deserved to win and we still need a lot of work to be done when you’re playing against a dangerous team, especially when you lose the toss.”
The teams will now move to Indore for the third T20I in less than 48 hours with the five-match series level at 1-1.
Sreshth Shah is a sub-editor at Cricinfo. @sreshthx
