Gambhir stresses on team effort

 The dashing left-hander smashed a 44-ball 75 but attributed the victory to team effort.
“I’d rather think about the team first than about myself. The team is winning and that’s more important,” Gambhir said when asked about the decision to let Manvinder Bisla open the innings instead of himself.

“Bisla’s done well, he has given us two good starts in the last two matches. That’s the team’s strategy,” he added. “I have been hitting the ball well, except for the first match, when I batted at number six. Hopefully, I can continue.”

Kolkata thumped Rajasthan, and Gambhir agreed that the game was pretty onesided. “We dominated the entire game. We bowled, batted and fielded well,” he said.

The India left-hander expected bigger turnouts at the Eden Gardens, the team’s home ground, for their coming matches. “Hopefully, we can continue the winning run and give them some to cheer about, because Kolkata is the city of joy,” Gambhir said.

Rival captain Shane Warne was gracious in defeat but felt 160 was a par score. “We weren’t good enough today. It was about a par score. They played well in the first six overs. We were a little bit unlucky and inexperience at times hurt us, a couple of chances fell short. But that’s part of the learning curve,” Warne said.

“A couple of things didn’t work out but we will take a lot of positives out of this game. We travel tomorrow to Eden Gardens and hopefully we can knock them over on their turf.”