India skipper M.S. Dhoni has refused to blame his team’s shoddy performance in the Twenty20 World Cup on playing in the IPL just ahead of the elite ICC tournament.
India lost both of its Super Eights matches — against Australia and the West Indies — and faces elimination from the World Cup. The gap between the IPL and World Cup was a mere five days.
India needed to win against the West Indies but they lost the crucial encounter by 14 runs and now stand only a mathematical chance of making the semifinals.
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Dhoni argued that the IPL and international T20 tournaments are different and cannot be compared.
“(People) can always come back and say we have played too much cricket in the IPL, but (we) have to do well in tournaments like these,” Dhoni said.
“The IPL is very different from international format. You have four foreigners. You don’t always have the best bowling attack. You have to keep your side balanced,” he said.
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Dhoni pointed out that in IPL; batsmen face only one or two fearsome fast bowlers while the scenario is different when it comes to international cricket.
“Most of the IPL sides have one bowler who bowls really good, really quick, but apart from that you try to target the weak links, that’s what happens in IPL.
“But in international cricket, most of the sides have got at least three bowlers. You can maybe target one or at the most two (bowlers).
“I think the IPL is very different, so it would be unfair to compare IPL to international cricket. We are on the losing side and that’s the fact right now,” he said.
Talking about Tuesday’s last Super Eights match against Sri Lanka, Dhoni said all they can do is put up a better show and leave the rest to statistics.
India not only needs to beat the islanders by a big margin but also have to pray that Australia beat West Indies to progress to the knockout stage.
“It’s a little bit too much to ask. You need to do well in a tournament like this, and we still have one more game. We would like to do well against a team that looks in good form, and leave the equation to itself, look to do well, whatever is the equation. We can’t do much about it. What we can do is win that game,” he said.