Twitterati irked by Dhawan’s third straight failure in the series

Indian opener Shikhar Dhawan was dismissed in the very first over during India’s chase of 206 against the West Indies in the 5th ODI. This was Dhawan’s third successive failure in the series and almost identical to his last game’s dismissal. India needs to win this game in order to win the ODI series.

This is Dhawan’s third tour of the West Indies. The wickets here are different to England, where the stylish left-hander was in rollicking form. The Sabina Park wicket appeared to have spongy bounce but was largely slow in nature if the bowler pitches it right up to the batsman. On such surfaces, driving the ball is never easy which is what Dhawan has done in the last two games. After getting his innings underway with a boundary, Dhawan wanted to drive one on the rise but hit it in the lap of the cover fielder. He made the error of hitting it away from the body which prompted him to get into the short a little too early. He did the same in Antigua but on that occasion found the laps of the mid on fielder.

The Delhi lad is coming into the tournament on the back of a prolific Champions Trophy in England where he ended up winning the golden bat for the second consecutive time in four years. The southpaw hasn’t adjusted from the rather flat pitches of England to the two paced wickets of West Indies. An international batsman has to be professional enough to smoothly get himself into different game plans almost immediately but Dhawan has failed to do that.

In the last three games, the 31-year old has posted scores of 2, 5 and 4. He did manage to get runs in the first two ODIs – 87 and 63 – but has failed miserably to get going in the last three. The Caribbean has never been a happy place for Dhawan as he averages just 26.07 in the Calypso land after 14 innings have resulted in just 365 runs.

Dhawan must not be willy nilly about his natural game and find a way of getting runs in conditions which are tough for batting if he wants to be remembered as a complete batsman. It is unlikely that he will play in the T20 which means that the tour is essentially over for Dhawan. In 5 games, he has managed to score 161 at 32.2 with two half-centuries, quite underwhelming for his lofty standards.

We bring you to the best tweets after Dhawan was sent back early during the Indian chase: