Hardik Pandya defends India after 4-run loss to West Indies in 1st T20I: 'A young team will make mistakes'

India captain Hardik Pandya has blamed the loss of wickets in the death overs as a reason for his team’s four-run defeat to hosts West Indies in the opening T20I of the five-match series on Thursday.

Chasing a 150-run target, India were restricted to 145/9 with Pandya and Samson getting out in the 15th over and Axar Patel in the 19th over.

The skipper after the game admitted that the loss of wickets “halted” India’s chase and that a young team is bound to make mistakes.

“In T20 cricket, if you lose wickets, it becomes difficult to chase down any total, that’s exactly what happened. A couple of hits can change the momentum towards you. When we lost a couple of wickets, that halted our chase,” Hardik said in the post-match presentation ceremony.

“We were right in the chase and quite comfortable there. We made some errors which costed us the game which is fine. A young team will make mistakes. We will grow together.

“Throughout the game, we were in control of the game which was the positive in this game. Good four games coming ahead.”

Talking about the decision to play three spinners; Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal and Axar Patel, Hardik said that he wants to play ‘KulCha’ together.

“It (playing three spinners) was more to do with the conditions. We would like to give opportunities to the two wristies (Kuldeep and Chahal) to play together. Axar adds a very good component in his batting as well. We felt that was the right combination,” he said.

Hardik also praised India’s debutants — Mukesh Kumar and Tilak Varma. After making his Test and ODI debuts on the West Indies tour, Mukesh returned match figures of 0/24 in his first T20I. Tilak Varma was India’s highest run-getter with a knock of 39 off 22 balls.

He dreamt of playing for India