Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Most disappointing loss of the World Cup: Kamande

Kenyan captain Jimmy Kamande rated his team's painful five-wicket defeat to Canada Monday as the 'most disappointing' loss in the 2011 World Cup.

Kamande, who had described the match as Kenya's best chance to pocket a win in the current edition, felt the batsmen did not put enough runs on the board.

"I would not hide that it is the most disappointing performance we have put so far," said Kamande in the post-match conference here.

"Canada like us is not a Test playing nation and we should have played a lot better than we did. Man to man we are more or less equal teams."

Kenya suffered the worst possible start, losing the first three wickets with seven runs on the board and were reeling at 58 for 5 in 15 overs.

The skipper conceded that it was tough to win the match from that situation.

"It was a difficult situation to recover from such a bad start but we managed to get close to 200. I still think we were 40 to 50 runs short."

Kenya dropped Jimmy Hansra while he did not open his account. He went on make 70 runs and was involved in a century stand with captain Ashish Bagai (64 not out).

Kamande termed the dropped chance as the turning point of the match with Canada's score being 48 for three.

"It was a crucial catch that we dropped and he (Hansra) capitalised from there on. Things could have been different had Seren (Waters) taken the catch."

The team faces Australia and Zimbabwe in the remaining matches.

"We will play our remaining matches with a positive frame of mind. It will be tough after the losses but there is no other way of approaching a match. You have to be positive. We will go out there and try to enjoy," said Kamande.