Gill rues lack of wickets in middle overs, missed chances after NZ level ODI series in Rajkot: ‘Becomes very difficult'

Key Highlights

• With five fielders in, if you don’t keep taking wickets in the middle overs, it becomes very difficult even if we would have added 15-20 more runs.
• And if you don’t pick up wickets in the middle overs, it’s very difficult to stop a target,” Gill said during the post-match presentation ceremony after the defeat. More from First Cricket 'Useless spinners': Jadeja, Kuldeep blamed as Mitchell's century helps New Zealand level series Virat Kohli dethrones Rohit Sharma to become World No 1 ODI batter after four years“On these kind of wickets, as soon as you have a partnership, the set batsman has to make it big because it’s not easy for the batsman coming in to score freely.
• In the end, we did get a decent target on the board and we bowled exceptionally well in the first 10 overs.
• And the kind of start that we got in the bowling, we were trying to squeeze them down, put them under pressure, but I think they batted really well in the middle overs,” he added.‘We could have been a little bit more brave’Gill, who brought up a second consecutive half-century on Wednesday, added that while the wicket did settle a bit under the lights compared to how it was when the hosts were batting, the bowlers could have been “a little bit more brave” in the middle overs and taken more chances. Mitchell, after all, had walked in at a time when the Black Caps were struggling to collect runs, having brought up the team fifty in the 14th over after losing both openers.
• The all-rounder, who had scored a 71-ball 84 in Vadodara, steadied the ship in the company of Will Young (87) with the two focused on absorbing pressure initially. Quick ReadsView All'Won't require surgery...': Real reason behind Jasprit Bumrah's absence from 5th Test revealed in new reportPCB bans players from WCL over India-Pakistan match controversy“In the first 10-15 overs that we bowled, the ball was doing a little bit.