Nagpur: Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni came down heavily on his batsmen who didn’t offer any sort of resilience chasing a modest 127 after the hosts were defeated by New Zealand in the ICC World T20 Super 10 tournament opener on Tuesday.
Indian suffered a major batting collapse when openers Shikhar Dhawan (1), Rohit Sharma (5) and middle-order mainstays Suresh Raina (1) and Yuvraj Singh (4) were dismissed inside the five overs. Dhoni pointed that lack of partnerships and adaptability by batsmen cost the home side dearly.
“There were no partnerships at all. I felt it was the batting department which could’ve done slightly better. I think we lost one wicket every alternate over. What’s important is to get some sort of a partnership going, even if it’s not big when it comes to number of runs scored. I feel to some extent it was lack of application,” Dhoni said during the post-match conference.
“Yes, it was a big outfield, the ball was turning but if you have some kind of a partnership going, you can look for twos and in between play the big shot. But if you keep losing wickets it becomes more and more difficult to rotate on a wicket like this,” he added.
The Indian skipper was all praise for his bowlers and in particular the spinners, who played a vital role to restrict Kiwis to 126. Dhoni also negated questions that India read conditions wrong and backed decision to go with same eleven.
“If you see Yuvi (Yuvraj Singh) didn’t bowl a single over because I felt he was not needed. Maybe the situation didn’t permit me to use him with two left-handers batting. I feel with Hardik (Hardik Pandya) being there, if the need arises of a seamer, you can obviously use him and if you need a spinner you already have like a Suresh Raina or a Yuvraj Singh,” Dhoni said.
“In fact there was a situation in the middle where I said I wont use Jadeja’s (Ravindra Jadeja) two overs also because with Anderson was looking for the big shots so maybe a fast bowler is a better option at that point of time,” he added.
