Our batsmen must improvise: MS Dhoni

After being convincingly dismantled by New Zealand, Indian captain MS Dhoni was flabbergasted with his team’s performance on all fronts.

India has now gone eight ODI’s without winning which has seen them dethroned from top of the rankings. Despite the batting failures, he came out in their support while acknowledging the Kiwis were better.

India’s Varun Aaron is clean bowled in the fifth ODI against New Zealand in Wellington yesterday

“We have invested a lot in our batting. It wasn’t a lack of experience because a lot of players in the side have played a lot of ODI cricket and most of them are batsmen. But New Zealand executed their plans very well and whatever we tried chasing or batting first it didn’t work. So now it is up to our batsmen to improvise and adapt and bring in a positive attitude,” said Dhoni, who scored 47 yesterday and also became the fourth fastest player to complete 8000 ODI runs (8046 runs from 243 ODIs).

‘Kiwis batted better’
Dhoni accepted the Kiwis had won the series mainly based on their batting in the middle overs. “Throughout this series, they (NZ) have played very good cricket. Their new ball pair has been very good but where they’ve taken the game away is in the middle overs batting which set up their charge late in the innings, picking up 80-90 runs
consistently.”

India lost the five match series 4-0 with the third ODI ending in a dramatic tie. Other than that, India have had a tough time in both batting and bowling departments. The Men in Blue have batted second four times after conceding a minimum of 271 runs (in the second rain affected ODI) thereby putting pressure on the batsmen to chase large targets. Unluckily, the batsmen haven’t been up to the mark in all but one match.

“In this series, more often than not, we were chasing big scores and you can’t rely on a couple of batsmen to score runs all the time. And so, apart from one game, most of the time we have been behind, having to catch up and the run-rate went too high. In the last 25 overs you can’t really chase eight or nine runs per over. That has been the setback to some extent,” added Dhoni.

‘Bowlers improved’
Despite the numbers speaking against the bowlers and Dhoni recently even asking them to ‘use their brain’, the skipper came out in support of his bowlers this time. “In this game, the new ball bowling was good and even the death bowling. I knew they will go for runs but I was happy with the death bowling.”

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