Mahendra Singh Dhoni wants his batsmen to score more runs as his bowlers continue to flounder against Australia. For the second game the Indian attack failed to defend a 300-plus total and captain Dhoni has demanded an all-round improvement ahead of the third game in Melbourne on Sunday.
“You can’t win a match only by scoring runs or you cannot score only 280 and say the bowlers have to win the match. Both departments have to improve,” he said. “Scoring 300 in back-to-back matches is quite tough anywhere, but we have done it in Australia. But I feel the batsmen have to take some more pressure on themselves now, and instead of 300, they have to target 330-340.
“It might happen that in pursuit of that we are all out for 280, but if we want to win comfortably, then we definitely need to score on the higher side,” he added.
Only one Indian bowler recorded a maiden over – Barinder Sran – while Umesh Yadav went for 7.40 an over. Dhoni also wants his attack to show more discipline by restricting the wides.
In the Perth ODI, they gave away 12 wides and yesterday too there were 11 wides with pacer Ishant Sharma, playing his first match of the tour, conceding eight.
“In both the games we have given a fair amount of extras, and that takes that many runs off the total score. The breeze was also circulating around and that made it slightly difficult for Ishant,” he said. “I feel even if we don’t cut down the extras, we’ll have to score a few more runs. So there are two options, either put pressure on the batsmen by scoring 330 or give them the batting first.”
Dhoni ruled out the inclusion of uncapped all-rounder Rishi Dhawan as they look to arrest the slide in Melbourne. “
We can’t really look at Rishi because to play him we will have to get rid of a proper batsman. Then we will have to play six bowlers. Six bowlers is a bit of luxury to have in cricket nowadays,” he said.
