MS Dhoni blames loss of wickets for loss in second ODI

MS Dhoni and his famed finishing abilities failed the Indians in the second ODI at the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi as they succumbed to a demoralizing six-run loss. However, when speaking about it, the 35-year old Indian skipper rued the fact that the Indians lost wickets at regular intervals, something that hampered their run chase rather significantly.

Speaking in the post-match presser, Dhoni went ahead and pointed out that the 41st over was quite clearly the turning point in the encounter, and over where the Indians lost the wickets of Axar Patel and Amit Mishra.

Dhoni noted, “If you see there were quite a few partnerships, but we kept losing wickets after every partnership. When you are chasing a score like this, it is important that you need to keep a few wickets because the runs were coming. Even if you need six or seven runs an over, in the end, it can easily be achieved. But our problem was that we kept losing the wickets, in fact in the 41st over we lost two wickets (Axar Patel and Amit Mishra).”

Speaking about the role of the finisher played by Hardik Pandya, Dhoni added that he would not like to blame him for losing his wicket at the wrong time. However, the 35-year old went on to add that if a batsman would not have thrown his wicket, the Indians would have been able to forge a win.

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“It’s not about one batsman, I felt we lost wickets throughout. Any batsman could have said that had I contributed 10 percent more, we would have won the game. So, it was the responsibility of the whole batting unit. Also if you lose one or two wickets, that slows you down to an extent. Then if you have that partnership and still lose a wicket again, again you have to start from scratch. If any of our batsmen had batted 15 minutes more, we would have won the game.”