Nottingham: Nervous to start with at his maiden World Cup, Australian wicketkeeper Alex Carey says he now cannot wait to challenge India, especially Mahendra Singh Dhoni, when the two sides clash Sunday in London.
Carey’s 55-ball 45 was good support to Nathan Coulter-Nile’s 60-ball 92 in Australia’s 15-run win over the West Indies here Thursday.
The early nerves of playing at a big tournament taken care of by that effort, Carey made some confident statements about the match against India.
“Playing against him (Dhoni) in India and Australia, he’s very calm. He always gives himself a chance to finish off the game,” Carey was quoted as saying by the ICC’s official website.
“He gives himself time out in the middle. They’re pretty calm heads, they give themselves a chance to finish off an innings,” he said. “It’s a World Cup, so I didn’t know too much what to expect. Rolling to the first game in the bus and seeing all the crowd gave me some goosebumps. I thought it was a pretty cool feeling.”
Reflecting on his performance against the West Indies, the 27-year-old said it helped that he was batting with Steve Smith at the other end.
“I gave myself a fair bit of time to get my innings going. Speaking to Smudge (Steve Smith) there was plenty of time left on the board,” he added. “It was a matter of trying to absorb a bit of pressure, just bat and scrap through as many as we could.”
Despite being the less experienced of the two, Carey said Smith didn’t give him any particular advice on how to turn things around after Australia had been reduced to 79/5 at one stage. The defending champions recovered to post 288.
“I suppose when I was two off 23 balls he gave me no indication I was doing something wrong, backing up what I was trying to do out there. There was no pressure from him, so we were fine just going together. I think we know at Trent Bridge, if we give ourselves a bit of time we can score freely,” he said.
“I didn’t think it was a bad thing at the time, I guess if you get out we’re 80/6 I gave myself a bit of time to assess the conditions and give the tail a chance,” he added.
PTI
