Mumbai, March 13: Canadian skipper Ashish Bagai today blamed his team’s shoddy bowling and fielding for the 97-run defeat to New Zealand in a Group A match of the cricket World Cup here today.
“If there was going to be help for the seamers, it would have been in the first hour. We bowled too short, too wide.
They put the team under pressure. We didn’t bowl in the right areas,” said Bagai, who top-scored for his team with a valiant 84 off 87 balls with the help of 10 fours.
“The fielding was probably the worst we had in a long time. We dropped catches. Our ground fielding was also poor.
It was a collective poor fielding effort,” said the stumper.
Bagai said rival skipper Ross Taylor’s whirlwind knock of 74 off just 44 balls was crucial to New Zealand nearly touching 300.
—-PTI