Dhoni juggles a formula of pace and spin
HAMILTON: India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni took the opportunity to give his pace bowlers a good workout on a slow pitch by delaying the introduction of his spinners in Tuesday’s World Cup match against Ireland at Seddon Park.
The defending champions have played each of their previous four Pool B matches in Australia and will complete the group stages against Zimbabwe at Eden Park in Auckland on Saturday.
Tuesday’s eight-wicket win over Ireland confirmed they will top their group after five successive wins.
On Tuesday, Ireland made a flying start after William Porterfield had won the toss, reaching 89 before losing their first wicket from the final ball of the 15th over.
They were then stifled by the Indian spinners, with Dhoni using Suresh Raina’s off spin to back up Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, and were eventually dismissed for an inadequate 259 with an over to spare.
Dhoni said later it was crucial to be flexible over his tactics and he would have introduced spin close to the fourth over had it been a must-win match for his team.
“The few slower ones that were bowled definitely got a bit of bounce and the ball gripped on the surface. So in a really crucial game for us the spinners would have come in really early,” he told the post-match news conference.
Dhoni said the new ball was coming on nicely to the bat, which was a good learning curve for his fast bowlers.
“Maybe in the next game we will do it slightly different. I think when we play in Auck- land the wicket will be very different. This (Seddon Park) is the slowest New Zealand wicket that you will see,” he said.
Dhoni praised the bowling of Ashwin, whose first eight overs cost only 19 runs.
“I have pushed him to bowl in the power plays and to use him in difficult situations. He’s very confident about his bowling, he understands his bowling well. The good thing about him is he keeps improving,” Dhoni said. “It’s obviously good to have him and he’s bowling very well.”
After dismissing Ireland for 249, Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan played themselves in for a token couple of overs.
They then launched a fullblooded attack, alternating flowing drives with explosive pulls while also pushing around the ball for comfortable singles.
Dhawan was dropped on five when John Mooney failed to hold a fierce caught-andbowled chance. After scoring five further runs he was dropped again off the unlucky Mooney, this time at backward point when captain William Porterfield parried a stinging cut but was unable to hang on to the rebound.
Those were the only times the Irish bowlers looked like taking a wicket and the duo took the score to 174 when Sharma chopped medium pacer Stuart Thompson on to his stumps and was out for 64 from 66 balls.
With the Indian supporters making a tremendous din, Dhawan took a single to complete his eighth one-day century from 84 balls with five sixes but was then caught off the following ball he faced from Thompson.
Virat Kohli (44 not out) and Ajinkya Rahane (33 not out) took their team to victory with 13.1 overs to spare.
Ireland captain Porterfield drew consolation from posting the highest total against defending champions India in the tournament so far.
“We have been confident with the bat throughout,” said Porterfield, who scored 67 and shared an opening partnership of 89 with Paul Stirling (42).
“We played very well for long periods of that game today. But is just show how ruthless you have to be the way India batted there. You have to kick on and score hundreds. We had a couple of 60s and 70s there. But we’ve chased down 300 and we’ve set 330 when we batted first.”
Porterfield said Ireland had lost a couple of quick wickets and then managed to lose a wicket every time they picked up momentum.
“We could probably have put them under a bit of pressure but we didn’t want to go too hard too soon especially after losing those couple of wickets.
“We just lost those wickets at crucial times and it slowed us down. We didn’t kick on as much as we would have liked but you have to give them credit as well,” he said. – Reuters