Bowlers' inexperience let us down: Raina

His captaincy debut soured by India's embarrassing loss to Zimbabwe, skipper Suresh Raina on blamed his inexperienced bowlers for the debacle in the tri-series opener.

His captaincy debut soured by India's embarrassing loss to Zimbabwe, skipper Suresh Raina on blamed his inexperienced bowlers for the debacle in the tri-series opener.

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"Unfortunately, we didn't bowl well today. Some of the bowlers were playing for the first time. Hopefully they can learn from our mistakes and move one from Bulawayo," Raina said after the match which his side lost by six wickets with 10 balls to spare.

Three Indian pacers -- Ashok Dinda, R Vinay Kumar and Umesh Yadav -- made their ODI debut and none of them impressed on Friday.

All of them proved expensive and it took them 13 overs to draw first blood, allowing Zimbabwe a rollicking start that set the tone for their successful chase.

In contrast, Raina said, the slow bowlers did a better job.

"In the first six overs, we didn't bowl well. (Amit) Mishra and (Ravindra) Jadeja then bowled well and we made a comeback. But they had a powerplay left and couple of their players played well, which cost us the game," Raina explained.

"We need to work on our bowling and fielding department to come back against Sri Lanka," he said.

Leading a weakened side in absence of senior players, Raina praised Zimbabwe for the way they chased down the target.

"They battled really well. They hanged around and had good partnerships," he said.

His Zimbabwe counterpart Elton Chigumbura was beaming after the match and he heaped praise on debutant Chris Ervine, who made an unbeaten 67, and Man of the Match Brendon Taylor.

"There was a good partnership between BT (Taylor) and Hamilton (Masakadza) which gave us a good start and the foundation for a win. All credit goes to BT for his knock.

"Credit goes to Ervine as well and he has to make sure that he gets consistent. He played very well today," Chigumbura said.