Indian skipper, Saurav Ganguly, blamed the wicket for his team's poor performance after they suffered a crushing 84-run defeat at the hands of New Zealand in the second match of the Coca Cola Cup at R. Premadasa Stadium on Friday.

"That was not the best one-day wicket to bat on" said a disappointed Ganguly "The ball was not coming onto the bat and that's going to make things difficult for the side batting second."

New Zealand won the toss and elected to bat, but struggled to get 211. However, in return they came out with a stellar performance in the field by bowling out the opposition for 127. Ganguly's poor form continued and he managed only five in 17 balls, but looked not overly worried about the defeat.

"This is just the beginning of the tournament" said the Indian skipper. "We've got five more games to go and hopefully we can turn things around in the matches to come."

Man of the Match Nathan Astle agreed with Ganguly's remarks on the wicket. "I think the wicket behaved a little better when we batted but was a little idle when they batted. It went up and down a bit and became a little bit slower. So I suppose we had the better of the batting conditions" remarked the opener.

Despite Astle's hundred New Zealand only managed 211 at the end of the day. "Their bowlers bowled particularly well throughout the day, especially Harbhajan Singh with a lot of turn and variation" said Astle. Harbhajan finished up with impressive figures of 2/25 in his quota of 10 overs.

"We were going to go for the kill in the last ten overs. But they bowled even better at the death, specially the two left-handers," he added.

New Zealand skipper Stephen Fleming was delighted with his side's bowling performance. "Nathan's hundred was obviously a good one. But more important was the way all the bowlers bowled."

The New Zealand new ball bowlers Darryl Tuffey and Kyle Mills set the tune by bowling impressive spells. Especially Tuffey who had figures of 7-2-7-1 in his first spell, which put the Indians on the back- foot. "Both of them bowled really well and set the stage for the others" remarked the captain. "This is the best performance I have seen them involved in."

Summing up the side's performance Fleming said, "We have improved a lot from the last game. But we still want to improve on things like playing the spinners better."

© CricInfo