There is no mistaking that India was on the edge of a precipice on Saturday night. It required an extraordinary partnership and a slice of good fortune — Hamilton Masakadza’s drop catch was disturbingly poor — to deliver a sixth consecutive victory in this World Cup.
History may not accord that fifth-wicket stand between M.S. Dhoni and Suresh Raina legendary status — it was after all Zimbabwe, a side ranked only above Afghanistan and Ireland in ODI cricket — but those runs did not come easy. That duet of 196 runs will have brought enormous relief to the team, and a great deal of happiness to the two performers.
Dhoni and Raina, it seems, enjoy each other’s company a good deal. They now have scored 3,480 runs as a combination, at an average bettered only by Hashim Amla and A.B. de Villiers (cut-off of 2000 runs). No pair above them in the all-time list has batted as low: openers predictably dominate that space, with a smattering of one-drop batsmen and the odd individual like Arjuna Ranatunga.
Dhoni and Raina have given India’s batting a second, powerful engine (pressed into service, it must be noted, only after the first breaks down). They can have a dispiriting effect on bowling sides — one mountain painstakingly scaled only to be met by the sight of another.
More than coincidenceThat their positions in the batting order unite them at the crease often is true, but their success as a team is due to a lot more than coincidence. “Since 2005, we’ve batted together in many instances. It’s because of that that we jell really well,” Dhoni said afterwards.
“The key is for both batsmen to run well between the wickets and to make sure when they get loose deliveries to get the most out of it. You can’t always rely on the big shots.”
Dhoni's appetite for scaling down challenging targets is well-known; as a partnership, Raina and he are staggeringly good. Their alliance averages 102.6 in successful run-chases, more than any other pair in the world with at least 1000 runs. That figure may seem inflated because they walk in late and thus are bound to gather more unbroken stands, but it could also be argued that they finish the job more often than not.
“What is really important in chasing down targets (as a partnership) is that if one is acting slightly cold, the other one has to take over,” Dhoni said. “Since 2005, he’s been batting at 5 or 6 for India and I’ve been batting nearby. So when we’re chasing, we’re in tune with each other. Bowlers are also worried by the left-right combination. Also, he’s a natural stroke-player. In any situation he plays big strokes; so I feel that eases off the pressure.”
Raina perhaps worried the captain with his aggression, though. “You need to keep telling him every now and then to shift down to third gear from fifth, because there aren’t many batsmen after him,” he laughed.
As a quarterfinal meeting with Bangladesh looms, Dhoni will feel India was well-served by having to climb its way out of a trench. Scoring a century under pressure, however inconsequential the result may have been, will lift Raina's spirits.
The cry in the early stages of the World Cup was for India’s lower-middle order to be tested; that wish has been granted. Dhoni would rather, though, that the batsmen above him — the openers in particular — did their job.
As reassuring as India’s replies against West Indies and Zimbabwe were, the team would prefer that the primary engine did not fail at all.
