Youngsters can’t be put under too much pressure: Dhoni

MS Dhoni has had an amazing turnaround in a matter of few days. Ridiculed and criticized for not being able to take his team home in a tense chase at Kanpur, MS was at his aggressive best in Indore. Having come in to bat with India in a precarious position he took them to not only safety but also a total worth fighting. It was his game in a sense. Many did not agree to the team changes he had made and the decision to bat first. But a win silenced all the doubters and instilled a new hope.

This should put to rest all doubts and reassure fans that he still has lot to offer. After the game the media naturally had a lot of queries and MS explained them all.

About his desire of batting at number 4 and still the reluctancy he said “I would say more about my side of the story, “Dhoni said. “If you see once I left Test cricket, I thought ‘Now I am going to enjoy my ODI cricket, I want to bat up the order’. But when I come over here, I see my team, I see the playing XI and I find it very difficult to promote myself because we have that pressure of who is going to bat at No.6, who is going to bat at No.7?”

“And if you see stretches of cricket where teams have done well, the lower order has contributed a lot irrespective of the format. Your lower order needs to perform. So that was the reason I came back over here and I am still batting at No.5 or 6 because I find it really difficult; I can’t really put too much pressure on some of the other youngsters in the side. After playing so many ODIs, if I can’t do it, there are not many who will be able to do it. It’s something that I have to do.”

That pretty much sums up MS Dhoni for you. Selfless and always placing the team ahead of personal goals. MSD was hopeful that his top order would soon return to form.

“Even though we won this game, and I made runs – usually you don’t want it to be like this. You want the top-order to perform. You want to be able to go and capitalize on what they do. I felt we needed partnerships at that point of time. When we lost Ajinkya Rahane and a few other wickets fell, I was thinking I should play my shots. I wasn’t sure how long the lower-order batsmen will survive with me. Then I said ‘No, let’s look to play a few more deliveries. Let’s look to play 50 overs’ If a few more wickets fall, then I would’ve looked for the big shots”

When enquired about the importance of the 22 run win he said it was crucial because the hosts were finally able to deliver the killer blow.

“It’s a very big win. The reason being, if you see our first game in Dharamsala, apart from that one over or those 4-5 minutes, we were really into the game, but not able to win it. The same thing happened in the last game – in Kanpur. So, a lot of time, you play good cricket for 80/90% of the game, but it depends on that bad phase that happened and how bad its impact was. So this win was very important for us. At the same time, it’s good to see our bowlers defend 250 on a wicket what was good to bat on”

“What was important was for us to get early breakthroughs and that was provided by the spinners. I thought they bowled really well on the wicket, there was less assistance for them, but they bowled the right lines and lengths and got the wickets. The pacers also took wickets at regular intervals. Overall, you can say it was a complete team effort. Overall, it was one game where if one individual would not have taken the responsibility and not performed we would not have won this game”.

There were also eyebrows raised when Amit Mishra was dropped from the eleven. Dhoni said about the call

“Mishra was our best bowler in the last game, but we had to drop him for this match. Axar Patel gives us slightly more with the bat compared to Mishra. In modern cricket, you can’t really play with six batsmen and five bowlers. Those days are gone.

You need somebody who can bat at no. 7. There are a few people who can do that for us – Stuart Binny, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar – other than that there are not many”.