Sanjay Bangar elucidates the reasons behind MS Dhoni's slow batting

With experienced campaigners like Sanjay Bangar and Ravi Shastri at the helm of Indian cricket, it’s fair to say that the future is in safe hands. Under the leadership of these two gentlemen and the likes of Bharat Arun and R. Sridhar, the Indian side has grown in stature and is performing extensively well.

They’re also pretty helpless on occasions as they have to watch the team capitulate on an off-day and can do nothing from the dressing room. At the end of the day, they’re also held accountable and answerable to their side’s poor performance. After a below-par result in the second ODI, Sanjay Bangar too had to come out and answer a few tough questions.

Chasing down a big total, the Indians never looked like going all the way and their batting was really facing a big test. Towards the end, MS Dhoni walked out to bat and his approach didn’t sync well with the required rate. When he eventually got dismissed, he even got booed by the Lord’s crowd, which was something unusual.

He wanted to build partnerships: Bangar

Sanjay Bangar said to the press that Dhoni wanted to build a couple of good partnerships with Suresh Raina and Hardik Pandya before hitting the fifth gear. He also mentioned that Dhoni’s onus remained on sticking in the middle till the 40th over and then start attacking the bowlers.

As it turned out, the likes of Suresh Raina and Hardik Pandya got dismissed way too early and Dhoni was left stranded alone with the tailenders. Although he reached the coveted 10,000 run milestone, Dhoni, as always, was under the scanner for not approaching the target aggressively.

“Dhoni’s plan at Lord’s was to build partnerships with Raina/Pandya till 40th over & attack after that. But they got out. He tried building a partnership with tailenders but that didn’t work. We didn’t have enough batting in the end to force a win,” Said Chetan Narula’s official Twitter handle, quoting Bangar’s words from an official press conference.

[interaction id=”5b4c538edb31a00ef2269db7”]