The Hindu : Sport : They were strategically superior: Dhoni

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 03, 2007
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Sport

They were strategically superior: Dhoni

Stan Rayan

KOCHI: He has got a movie offer waiting for him. And on Tuesday, Sreesanth’s aggression and antics came to the fore once again on the big stage in the Future Cup one-dayer against Australia at the Nehru Stadium.

His bitter send-off to Andrew Symonds and other heated moments between players in the middle came in for much discussion by the captains after the Australian victory.

“It’s a great feeling to win in front of such a big crowd, we’ve taken a one-nil lead and we’re very happy with that. We saw some really hard-fought cricket, some comments between different players,” said Adam Gilchrist, the Australian captain.

“I also saw a few things that I wouldn’t expect from my son in a backyard game of cricket.”

Explosive

“Sreesanth was quite explosive about how he was going to take the challenge to us,” said Gilchrist. “He says a lot of things in the press, that’s fine. When we get our chance, we’ll play aggressive cricket too.”

The Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni first thought the byplay between Sreesanth and Symonds was nothing serious. “I thought Sreesanth was joking, after that I realised that it was quite serious.

“I told him, ‘that’s not the way to behave to a batsman who is jut out’…of course, that’s Sreesanth,” he said.

Rotation

Life is not easy for Indian cricketers, with their long all-work, no break schedule. The pressure is high, the toll heavy on their bodies.

“We need to rotate players, our body can’t take too much load,” said the Indian captain. “There’s no off-season in Indian cricket and after some time, it starts telling on your body.”

“It’s very tough out there, different countries, different conditions,” said Dhoni.

“We need to rotate the fast bowlers…Irfan has come back nicely, he has done well in the last three or four matches, so that will work nicely.”

Dhoni, who is making his ODI debut as captain in this series, accepted that the Australians were strategically superior. “Their fielding placement was very well. And they batted very well … it’s tough for a skipper to set a field for them.”

The dashing skipper said that the mid-innings choking, both in batting and bowling, was an area of concern.

“We got a good start but a few wickets down and the pressure came on us. Even in bowling, we’re started off well…of course, we were giving away boundaries. We now need to work on the middle and death overs, from the 30th to the 50th.

“We were not bowling well at the death. We could have restricted them to 260 or 270, that would have been a decent total.”

Brad Haddin, the man of the match for his unbeaten 87, said that the atmosphere in his maiden tour of India was enjoyable. “You don’t get to play in a cauldron like this,” said Haddin. .

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