Canada captain Ashish Bagai on Monday praised his strike bowler Henry Osinde for restricting Kenya to a modest score of 198 and set up his side's win in a Group A encounter of the cricket World Cup here.
Osinde (4/26) swung the ball early on which trouble the Kenyan top order batsmen and also got reverse swing with the old ball and Bagai was all praise of his pacer.
"Osinde did a fantastic job first up. The ball was swinging early on and he tormented the top-order (of Kenya)," Bagai said after his side's five-wicket win.
"We were never under pressure while chasing. We were fortunate not to have run-rate pressure. Once you were in, you could rotate the strike. In the end it was just about milking them around," he said.
Bagai said the win would boost their confidence and with his bowlers doing a fine job so far, they were hoping to be competitive against New Zealand in their next match. "We were a bit disappointed of our performance in the last three matches. Happy that we have a win under our belt. Our bowlers have been in good form and they did well against Pakistan also. So we are hoping that we can be competitive against New Zealand," he said.
"It has been a very good experience for our side especially the youngsters. We have five Under 19 players with us. They must have learnt a lot from this World Cup and they would serve the country well in next 4-5 years. This is the first time we are having all home grown players though many are of South Asian descent," he added.
Man-of-the-match Osinde said he was surprised to get the early swing of the ball.
"I was a bit surprised by the swing. I was not expecting that as I thought we would be bowling wicket to wicket. But after the first ball I came to know that it is going to swing. Even the old ball also had some reverse swing. It was also a surprise," he said.
Kenya captain Jimmy Kamande rued his side were short of 20-30 runs and that proved the difference.
"We started very badly, but after the recovery 220-230 looked possible and that would have been defendable. Osinde bowled brilliantly," he said.
"Tanmay Mishra (who scored 51) got out at the wrong time. When you are defending 200, you need to keep trying for wickets. Did not work today (Monday), but there were some things to learn," he said.
Asked about the next match coming up against defending champions Australia, Kamande said, "We have to improve in our batting and score 200 plus against Australia if we bat first. That would be an improvement. We are hopeful that we would be competitive."
