Cook gives credit to Indian batters

England captain Alastair Cook today gave credit to Indian batsmen Rohit Sharma and Suresh Raina for the five-wicket win of the home side in the fourth one-dayer here, saying the 68-run fourth wicket partnership between the two took the game away from his team.

Cook said with 257 runs on the board he felt his team was in with a decent chance and praised opener Rohit (83) and Raina (not out 89) for the way they batted that enabled the hosts to clinch the five-match series 3-1, with the last game at Dharamsala being rendered inconsequential.

"With 260, we thought we were in the game. We needed couple of early wickets. But I thought the partnership between Raina and Sharma was important, they got the runs quickly," Cook told reporters after the match.

Raina got a reprieve when he was caught by Cook in the slips, but umpire Steve Davis declared a dead ball as pacer Steven Finn had knocked down the bails at his delivery stride.

Cook felt if Raina had got out at that stage, it could have helped his team's cause. He said it was "frustrating" as they thought they had Raina but soon came to know that the umpire had ruled it as a dead ball. Finn had already been warned for a similar offence at Kochi.

He admitted that "there was a little bit of confusion".

"Apparently, we had been told before, but I think in the heat of the moment, you are not entirely sure. We tried to clarify things. It is frustrating when such things happen. At that time, it wasn't pretty clear that we had been told before ... at the moment, emotions were high," he said.

"To be fair to the umpires, they had told us that this is the rule. It can be frustrating (when team starts to celebrate and the ball is ruled as dead). I wasn't totally sure. They had told us before. In Kochi, he was told (warned). I couldn't remember the conversation they had, lot of things go through your mind," Cook said.

... contd.

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