Shikhar Dhawan scores good in multi-side tournaments, feels Aakash Chopra

Indian opener Shikhar Dhawan is not in an ideal touch months before the World Cup. He hasn’t scored a fifty since January while his century in international cricket was against Pakistan in Asia Cup last September. The hard-hitting left-hander has scored only two half-centuries since winning the Man of the Series award in the Asia Cup and the experts are worried as the opening duo of Dhawan and Rohit Sharma will have to click big time if India are to go the distance in the upcoming WC.

Former India Test opener Aakash Chopra sees a silver lining though. According to Chopra, Dhawan delivers when it comes to playing in multi-lateral series and given the WC is also one of them, there are reasons to believe that the batsman will be back among runs in no time.

Dhawan, following his rich exploits in the Asia Cup in which he hit two centuries (the other one against Hong Kong), has gathered an ordinary tally of 376 runs in 15 innings at an average of below 29. With India set to play just three more international games before the World Cup, the batsman will also not have enough opportunities to middle the ball before the mega event. Dhawan scored zero and 21 in the two ODIs against Australia, falling to part-time bowler Glenn Maxwell in the second one.

“There is no denying Dhawan is going through a bad patch but with only three international matches left, I don’t see any drastic changes happening. If he has scored 5000 plus ODI runs (5199 from 125 games), it means that he has been around for a reasonable period of time, seen ups and downs to have scored that many runs. His record in multi-nation tournaments (World Cup, Champions Trophy, Asia Cup) is fabulous, so it could well be a matter of time that he is back in form,” SportsCafe cited reports quoting Chopra as saying.

Dhawan had a productive World Cup in 2015

Dhawan was India’s highest scorer in the 2015 World Cup which was also his first. He hit two hundreds in that tournament (against South Africa and Ireland) besides one fifty (against Pakistan) to end up scoring over 400 runs at an average of over 51.

Chopra also said Dhawan, discarded from Test team, could have used the time after playing T20Is in Australia to play Ranji Trophy for his home team Delhi and regain touch. The left-hander though has the Indian Premier League starting March 23 after the three remaining ODIs against Australia to hit some form.

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