Batting collapse cost us the match: Dravid

Chennai, Jan 27 (UNI) Team India Skipper Rahul Dravid blamed the batting collapse in the last 15 overs for their defeat at the hands of the West Indies in the third ODI at the M A Chidambaram here today.

''That's when we lost the match. We should not have lost seven wickets in the space of 36 runs on a flat wicket. It's not acceptable,'' he said.

''It was a lesson about handling the death overs,'' he said and added that 340 would have been a good score.

''But it didn't happen.'' Dravid, however, said that his team was confident of winning the series. ''If we play well at Baroda, we should win''.

He denied a suggestion that resting Sourav Ganguly turned out to be a wrong decision. ''No decision is wrong. We did that with something specific in mind.'' Dravid commended Robin Uthappa's knock of 70 runs and regretted the fact that the team failed to capitalise on it, despite his and Sachin Tendulkar's century stand later.

''One of us should have stayed on till the end. I think we just paid the penalty in the end overs. It was not so good cricket,'' he added.

Dravid also rejected the suggestion that too much of experimentation was being tried.

UNI