Early wickets crucial: Dhoni
First Published : 04 Feb 2012, 10:44
Last Modified : 04 Feb 2012, 10:44
Melbourne, Feb 3: India skipper MS Dhoni was pleased with the effort displayed by the young members of the team in the second T20I at the MCG. It was India’s fielding that helped put pressure on the Australians and restrict them to a sub-par score that the visitors chased down with eight wickets in hand.
In a brief interview with the media, captain MS Dhoni spoke about the roles of the different sets of players and the confidence of the team.
Excerpts:
On the win
The feeling is good. We haven’t won a single game in the last one month. It’s good to be on the winning side. We did things right [today]. The fielding department was superb, the best I have seen the Indian cricket team field, so that’s a positive for us; the batting was also on the mark. We got off to a good start. Virat Kohli continued with Gautam Gambhir and finally the game went our way. But the early bowling breakthroughs were crucial. It’s needed, especially in games like these. If you have opposition batsmen like [David] Warner, you have to get them out otherwise they will keep scoring runs.
On the energetic team
We have got quite a few youngsters in the side. We just distribute the job among them and the guys like me and [Virender] Sehwag are involved in the thinking aspect and stick to that. The youngsters just pick themselves up. If someone makes a good effort on the field, even if he has not caught the ball or stopped the ball, somebody goes up and congratulates him for his effort. […] That’s a big positive and in turn lifts the whole dressing room.
On moving into the ODIs on the back of the win
It’s not like if we hadn’t won this game we wouldn’t have had great confidence. Every game is a fresh game. If you just go by stats, we had lost the last game which means we should have lost this one. [It] doesn’t really go that way in cricket. To be on the winning side we did a lot of things right on the field and we will look to do it again in the coming games. That’s what will help us do better in coming games.
