Victorious Dhoni demands more

Denesh Ramdin keeps West Indies' hopes of victory alive courtesy of a combative 29 batting at number eight

Buy this photo

India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni criticised his side’s complacency despite their 20-run win over West Indies in the first one-day international at Sabina Park.

Yuvraj Singh's fine 131 off 102 balls led India to 339 for six, and they seemed to be cruising to victory when they reduced West Indies to 250 for seven.

But numbers eight and nine Denesh Ramdin and David Bernard kept things interesting with 29 and 19 respectively, before the hosts were bowled out for 319 in the penultimate over.

“I think most of the guys thought we had won the game at seven down,” Dhoni said. “That's the mistake we committed and hope we won't commit it again.

"If you look at the scoreboard it says we won by 20 runs but it was much closer than that."

Dhoni hailed the contribution of Yuvraj, who struck 10 fours and seven sixes, saying: "He has been brilliant. We rely a lot on him. He bats at number four and gets big runs."

Yuvraj, however, admitted he found it difficult to time the ball during the early stages of his innings.

"For the first 20 balls I was struggling, but when I got through the first 25-30 runs I was confident," he said. "As I got going I got momentum and played a few shots."

West Indies skipper Chris Gayle took heart from his team’s valiant chase, and felt they were not that far from victory.

"A bit of luck and anything could have happened," he said. "We're looking forward to (the second ODI on) Sunday and hopefully we can square the series.

"It's a good wicket to bat on. When you're bowling to these batters, it's going to be difficult with the power of Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni."

Gayle was later fined 20% of his match fee for overseeing a slow over-rate – West Indies were two overs short of the required allocation – while his players were hit with 10% fines.