Team India ended their long English sojourn with a thrilling game of T20 in which they fell short by an excruciating three runs, at Edgbaston.
With 17 runs needed from the final over, chasing England’s 180, MS Dhoni dispatched the first ball for a six, before missing a couple of big swipes. In what turned out to be an exhilarating last over, Dhoni refused a single off the penultimate ball and couldn’t clear the boundary off the last.
Explaining his tactic, the Indian captain said he decided to take the responsibility of seeing the team through as his partner, Ambati Rayudu, had just come in to bat.
“Rayudu had just come in to bat and when batting at 6 or 7, it is very difficult for a batsman to come in and play shots straight away, especially for a top-order batsman like Rayudu, who is not used to such situations,” Dhoni said.
“So, when I hit the first ball for a six, I thought it was a better option for me to take the strike. I made the decision before the start of the final over that if I play six deliveries, I had a good chance of scoring those 17 runs. Rayudu too could have hit a boundary but because that’s my strength, I took the responsibility. I took the decision but it didn’t pay off in this game.
“Getting 17 from six balls is always going to be difficult. But I was glad that I got a boundary off the first ball of the over, which meant the pressure was pretty even (between me and the bowler). There were at least two more deliveries that I could have hit for boundaries but it was one of those days when I didn’t middle it,” Dhoni said.
While making the assessment of the performance of his bowling departments, Dhoni had good words for debutant leg-spinner, Karn Sharma.
“It was a decent wicket; didn’t have much turn on offer but he bowled well,” Dhoni said. “A few deliveries were on the shorter side, which he got hit off but other than that, he was good.
“Even the short balls he bowled were intended to be short because he was looking for the batsman to step out and hit. He bowled the wrong ones and wanted to bowl the back of a length, trying to get the batsman to hit across.
“It was a strategy that didn’t work but overall his control is quite good. He has a quick action but he looks to bowl the right line although he is not a big turner of the ball. It was a good start for him.”
Dhoni was critical of his fast bowlers’ death bowling performance, especially the last over bowled by Mohammad Shami, where he dished out a series of full-tosses. The skipper, however, conceded it could have been difficult for the pacers to get the swinging yorkers right since the ball had hardly deteriorated.
“Bowling in the last few over is still an area we need to work on,” he said. “It was slightly more difficult today because we played with three spinners and so the ball wasn’t scuffed up enough for the pacers to get the reverse swing and hit the yorkers right.
“Having said that, we could have tried to double-bluff the batsmen but setting a particular field and bowling something else. If you’re not able to bowl the yorkers, it is important to change your line and length and try to use the longer side of the ground more often. We have to improvise and today we didn’t do that.”
Overall, Dhoni summed up the England tour as a great learning experience for his young team and hoped they would take lessons from the mistakes they committed on this tour.
“This tour was a big learning curve for our young side. None of the boys had played a five-Test series before this and it was always going to be a challenge. We did well in the initial part of the tour – in the first two Tests – and in the ODI series.
“We slipped in the middle where we lost the last three Test matches. It happens to all teams but it will now be important we learn from the mistakes we made here and look to rectify them in the future series.”
