After his hundredth one-day win as captain, a result that put him above Hansie Cronje and below only Ricky Ponting (165) and Allan Border (107) and took India into the semifinals of the World Cup, M.S. Dhoni’s broadest grin was reserved for something far less monumental.
“About the catch,” he said, referring to his one-handed diving effort to get rid of Soumya Sarkar, “it's a fluke and it happens, so let’s enjoy it, and hopefully it will happen more often.”
It wasn’t as if he wasn’t pleased with Thursday’s victory over Bangladesh, though. Rohit Sharma and Suresh Raina were lauded by the skipper.
“They batted well. The wickets kept falling on the other side, and still Rohit kept himself very calm. His strike rate dropped, but still he knew if he was there and he played maximum overs, he could definitely score and score at a good pace.
“Raina — we all know he’s a natural stroke-maker. It’s always good to have somebody like him batting at five. Overall how they took the game forward was very crucial because one more wicket at that point of time and we could have ended up closer to 250.”
Praise for Ashwin
After dismissing a seventh team in seven matches, Dhoni was pleased with the bowling effort. But R. Ashwin’s contribution, he worried, would go unnoticed.
“Ash bowled really well. If you just look at the stats — you see 10 overs and no wickets. In India they don’t rate people high if you don’t take wickets. But if you see how he maintained and created that pressure, that was one of the reasons the batsmen had to go after the other fast bowlers and because of this we got wickets.
“We have got quite a few teams out in a row. It has never really happened with the Indian cricket team, so it’s definitely a big positive,” he said.
Dhoni was confident India would sustain its performance, irrespective of who (Australia or Pakistan) it faced in the semifinals.
“What’s important for us is we have scored runs in all the games, whether we have batted first or chased, and still we don’t have our batsmen in the top five run scorers list for the World Cup, which means everybody has chipped in.
“It is a good position to be in, especially in the knock-out stages. We’ll have to keep repeating what we have been doing; as simple as that. Maybe the individuals who get the wickets, they will change.
“The batsmen who score runs, the names will change, but still, we are scoring runs and we are taking wickets. That will be good for us.”
