Colombo, October 4: It has become a familiar tune since India won the World Cup at home last year. After that stupendous victory, captain MS Dhoni has been left defending his team, which has failed to live up to the expectations.
Following two dismal tours of England and Australia, where India lost eight Test matches on the trot, the men in blue crashed out of the World T20 in Sri Lanka on Tuesday.
Mahi - as the captain is fondly called - has unsuccessfully led India in three T20 World Cups in his five-year tenure as the leader. This time, after the win against South Africa wasn't enough, Dhoni was more than willing to put up a brave front.
He was in no mood to be critical of his team and ruled out any scope of an 'overhaul'.
"The same question was asked when we lost in England and Australia. This is the one question that comes up when we have not done well, but just see our performance here. We lost one game, and lost it badly," he said.
He then blamed the heavy defeat to Australia in their Super Eights opener, and the mauling that India received at the hands of Shane Watson and David Warner in that game, on the 'wet ball' again.
"We all know what impact rain has on the bowlers, especially spinners and bowlers who don't bowl at 140 kmph plus. Let's get practical about what the reason was, and then assess if it's the fault of the players. It is not. It can happen in this format. You are at the stage where other games are making an impact. You don't want that kind of situation to happen but sometimes you are just forced to accept it," Dhoni explained.
The skipper's other excuse was that his team was left with too much to do on Tuesday.
"The performance was otherwise satisfactory. We didn't think that the Pakistan vs Australia match would have such an impact on us. We knew that it would affect us, but the required margin to win (vs South Africa) was too big... so we had a problem," he confessed.
Comments
Add new comment