Bridgetown: In the first ODI between West Indies and India, 15 wickets fell in less than 46 overs on a Kensington Oval pitch that offered bounce and carry for seamers and turn for spinners.

West Indies were all out for 114 in 23 overs after being sent in. India, who moved their white-ball experts up the order, lost five wickets while chasing the target before Rohit Sharma scored the winning runs while batting at position seven.

"To be honest, I never thought the pitch was going to play like that," Rohit said at the post-match presentation. "It had everything for seamers and spinners, and the run-scoring was quite difficult. But to restrict them to that score was a superb effort from our bowling unit.”

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"We never thought we would lose five wickets but it was good to give some game time to a lot of those ODI guys who have just come in. But firstly, it was important for us to get into a good position. Restricting them to 114 was a great effort, and I thought we had that commanding position that we needed, which is why we thought okay, we could try some of those guys who haven't played a lot of cricket in a while and give them a go.”

"I don't know when they will get time moving forward, so whenever we get an opportunity like that, we will try to accommodate all these guys."

In addition, Rohit gave Mukesh Kumar praise for playing his first ODI after he made his Test debut earlier in the tour. Alick Athanaze failed to clear a bounding Ravindra Jadeja at backward point on the seamer's first delivery, which was short and wide. Despite this, the seamer took his first wicket in the format.

"Mukesh has been brilliant," Rohit said. "Even in the Test series we saw he can swing the new ball, has got a bit of pace and is quite consistent as well. So we want to see what he has to offer. I haven't seen much of him in domestic cricket either, so it was good to see him playing with the white ball as well."

???? Milestone Alert ????#TeamIndia pair of @imkuldeep18 (4⃣/6⃣) & @imjadeja (3⃣/3⃣7⃣ ) becomes the first-ever pair of Indian left-arm spinners to scalp 7⃣ wickets or more in an ODI ???? #WIvIND pic.twitter.com/F18VBegnbJ

— BCCI (@BCCI) July 27, 2023

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Shai Hope, the captain of the West Indies, regretted about batters' lack of effort. West Indies had reached 88 for 3 with Hope appearing to be in complete control despite losing three wickets in the first nine overs. After Jadeja sent Shimron Hetmyer back, West Indies lost their final seven wickets for a total of 26 runs.

"Too many words come to mind but let's just say we didn't play the way we needed to," Hope said. "On a challenging surface like that, as a batting group, we need to find ways to score.

"Anyone who was watching can see what happened there. Any 9.30am start in the Caribbean will be difficult [for batting] and the Indian bowlers bowled pretty well on this surface, but again we didn't score enough runs."

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